President Bola Tinubu has signed an executive order to bring Nigeria’s cryptocurrency and virtual assets sector under a coordinated regulatory framework, closing the gaps that have allowed fraudsters and unregistered operators to exploit unsuspecting Nigerians for years.
The Presidential Executive Order on Virtual Assets Coordination, signed on July 17, takes effect immediately. It does not create a new regulator or take powers away from existing agencies. Instead, it brings them together under one roof to stop them from working in silos, which has been the core problem until now.
Here is what that means in plain terms. The Central Bank of Nigeria regulates payments. The Securities and Exchange Commission regulates investments. The Nigeria Revenue Service handles taxes. The Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit tracks suspicious financial activity. All of them have some stake in crypto, but they have been operating separately, sometimes overlapping, sometimes leaving gaps. Fraudsters have been walking through those gaps. This order is designed to shut them.
To do that, the order establishes a Virtual Asset Council chaired by the CBN, with the SEC and the Nigeria Revenue Service as vice-chairs, alongside the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit and the Office of the National Security Adviser.
The council will provide policy direction and coordination across all these agencies. It also creates a Virtual Asset Office as the day-to-day operational body, with its secretariat sitting inside the CBN.
On the question of who regulates what, the order is clear. If you are dealing in virtual assets that behave like securities, investment products, tokens that represent shares or returns, the SEC handles you. If you are doing payments, settlements, custody, or related services with non-security virtual assets, the CBN is your regulator. If there is ever a grey area between the two, the council resolves it.
What this means for crypto users, businesses and the broader industry
For everyday Nigerians who have lost money to fake crypto platforms and unregistered exchanges, this order is directly aimed at the conditions that made those scams possible. When regulators are fragmented, fraudsters thrive. A coordinated oversight framework makes it harder to operate in the shadows.
For legitimate crypto businesses already operating in Nigeria, the order brings much-needed clarity. The registration pathway is now tied to what you do, not just what you call yourself. That reduces ambiguity and should make compliance more straightforward.
Read also: Taiwan jails BitShine founder for 22 years in its biggest crypto fraud sentence yet
The CBN is also proceeding with a regulatory sandbox for virtual assets, a controlled environment where eligible operators can test products, services, and blockchain-based solutions under close supervision before they go to market. This is significant because it means innovation does not have to wait for full regulation to catch up. Companies can build, test, and get feedback in real time while regulators watch and learn.
The Nigeria Revenue Service will separately release a tax policy for the virtual assets sector, giving businesses and individuals more certainty about their tax obligations. The federal government is also finalising a comprehensive Virtual Assets White Paper that will lay out the country’s longer-term policy direction for the sector.
The council has been given 30 days to develop a Harmonised Implementation Framework to guide all participating agencies in putting the order into effect.
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