Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has signed an executive order creating a unified framework for virtual assets, establishing a cross-agency council chaired by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to coordinate oversight of Africa’s largest crypto market.
The Presidential Executive Order on Virtual Assets Coordination, 2026, announced by presidential adviser Bayo Onanuga, takes effect immediately. It responds to a regulatory environment the government describes as fragmented, with agencies operating in silos, overlapping in some areas and leaving gaps in others that unregistered operators have used to reach Nigerians unchecked.
Official announcement of the Executive Order on Virtual Assets Coordination, 2026. Source: State House, AbujaWhat the Crypto Order Changes, and What It Does Not
The order establishes a Virtual Asset Council chaired by the CBN, with the Nigeria Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as vice-chairs, alongside the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit and the Office of the National Security Adviser.
A Virtual Asset Office will handle day-to-day coordination, with its secretariat based at the central bank and an integrated supervisory technology platform giving agencies shared visibility while each retains control of its own data.
Notably, the framework creates no new regulator and moves no powers between existing ones. Registration instead follows the activity and the asset: securities-like activities register with the SEC, while payment, settlement, custody and related services involving non-security virtual assets register with the CBN. The Council resolves cases where responsibility is unclear.
Three further measures accompany the order. The CBN is proceeding with a regulatory sandbox for virtual assets, the Nigeria Revenue Service will publish a tax policy for the sector, and the government is finalizing a Virtual Assets White Paper setting out longer-term policy direction. The Council has 30 days to produce a harmonized implementation framework.
Investor Takeaway
Clarity, not deregulation. The order streamlines oversight without changing who regulates what, potentially making Nigeria’s crypto market easier to navigate for investors and businesses.
A Market Regulators Can No Longer Treat as Marginal
The order follows years of growth that outpaced Nigeria’s supervisory architecture. In March, SEC Director-General Emomotimi Agama said the country had recorded roughly $96 billion in crypto transactions, up sharply from the $50 billion disclosed a year earlier, driven by retail participation and peer-to-peer trading.
Stablecoins have become the sharper policy problem. In June, the IMF warned that dollar-pegged tokens were testing Nigeria’s monetary framework, noting the country accounts for around 60% of sub-Saharan Africa’s stablecoin inflows since 2019. The Fund flagged risks to monetary sovereignty and capital flow management and urged authorities to bring stablecoin activity fully inside the regulatory perimeter. Tuesday’s order is the clearest answer yet to that call.
The shift completes a reversal that began with the 2021 banking ban on crypto transactions and continued through the Investment and Securities Act 2025, which classified digital assets as securities.
What remains untested is execution. Coordination frameworks are easier to sign than to operate, and the 30-day deadline will offer the first evidence of whether five agencies with distinct mandates can supervise a market that has spent a decade growing in the space between them.
Investor Takeaway
With crypto activity now deeply embedded in Nigeria’s financial system, coordinated regulation could reduce policy risk for businesses and institutional capital entering the market.
