Nigeria’s regulators spent five years trying to ban a market that refused to die. Now they have given up, and joined it. President Tinubu’s July 17 executive order creates a Virtual Asset Council, chaired by the central bank and stocked with the securities regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the tax authority the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), to coordinate licensing of digital assets nationwide. The pivot is remarkable given that this started as a 2021 directive ordering banks to shun all crypto ties.
A need birthed by size
Nigeria is Africa’s largest crypto market and has long needed to reconcile its enthusiasm for digital assets with its regulatory instincts. Between July 2024 and June 2025 alone, Nigerians conducted US$92.1 billion in on-chain transactions, making the country second only to India globally by adoption volume. However, these transactions have taken place in a legal grey area for years, with regulators
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