Nigeria needs a Digital Assets Act — not a patchwork of SEC rules and CBN circulars, but a single, coherent legislative instrument that defines the categories of digital assets, allocates regulatory jurisdiction clearly between the CBN and the SEC, establishes a licensing framework for exchanges, custodians, brokers, and advisers, and provides genuine legal certainty for market participants.
This advice was given recently by Mr Kazeem Adekunle Gbadamosi, SAN, MCIArb. (UK), the Principal Partner at Adebayo & Gbadamosi Legal Practitioners in a Keynote Address he delivered at Kola Daisi University, Ibadan.
Speaking on the topic, “Cryptocurrency and the Law: Navigating the Legalities of Digital Assets, Financial Crime and the Future of the Naira,” Gbadamosi noted that the statute books are still being written for the subject of cryptocurrency, digital assets, block chain. Its cases are still being decided and the rules are still in formation.
He listed a series of steps government needs to take as matter of urgency to bring much needed clarity and professionalism to the crypto sector.
“This is not a lecture. This is a conversation about the future — and your generation is its main character,” he told the gathering of students and lecturers of the institution.
“In over three decades at the Nigerian Bar — from the chambers of distinguished seniors in Ilorin and Ibadan, through years of litigation, arbitration, and regulatory practice, to the privilege of being called to the Inner Bar as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria — I have watched the law grapple with new realities many times. It has struggled with mobile banking. It has struggled financial technology. Now, it is grappling with Digital Assets and Artificial Intelligence. But each time in the past, the law eventually found its footing.”
The Senior Advocate noted that the current situation in which a virtual asset service provider must navigate overlapping and sometimes contradictory guidance from multiple regulators is a barrier to legitimate investment and a source of compliance risk for businesses acting in good faith.
He further stated that the second priority for government is institutional capacity.
“The SEC’s Fintech division, the CBN’s digital assets unit, the EFCC’s cybercrime section, the NFIU — all need sustained investment in human capital and technology,” he said. “This means hiring people with genuine technical expertise, not just rotating in officials from other departments. It means acquiring blockchain forensics tools. It means developing prosecution guidelines for crypto-related offences that reflect the technical realities of the evidence. Money spent on regulatory capacity is not expenditure — it is investment in the integrity of the financial system.”
Gbadamosi listed tax clarity as the third priority for the sector. He said although the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has issued guidance suggesting that cryptocurrency gains are subject to Capital Gains Tax and that crypto transactions may attract Value Added TAX, there remains substantial ambiguity.
“Tax ambiguity is a deterrent to legitimate participation,” he said. “A clear, published tax framework — covering gains, losses, staking income, and NFT transactions would bring significant activity into the formal economy and generate revenue while reducing the uncertainty that currently drives compliance avoidance.”
According to him, the fourth priority is consumer protection because it is where the human cost of regulatory failure is most acute.
“Retail investors, often young, often financially unsophisticated, often responding to social media promotions from individuals of dubious authority have lost vast sums in pump-and-dump schemes, fraudulent exchanges, and Ponzi structures dressed in blockchain clothing,” he said.” The law must act swiftly and visibly in these cases. Deterrence requires not merely that offenders are eventually convicted, but that they are convicted quickly enough for the lesson to register with potential imitators.”
Gbadamosi emphasised the importance of regional and international coordination, saying this is in deed the fifth priority.
He noted that though the African Continental Free Trade Agreement creates the ambition of a single continental market, a fragmented, inconsistent patchwork of national crypto regulations across 53 African states will undermine that ambition and create arbitrage opportunities for bad actors.
“Nigeria, as the continent’s largest economy, has both the standing and the responsibility to lead in developing harmonised regional standards — through the African Union, through ECOWAS, and through active engagement in global standard-setting bodies including the Financial Stability Board and the Financial Action Task Force,” he said.
” Leadership is not claimed. It is exercised, consistently, over time, in the details of policy as much as in the rhetoric of summits.”
He then challenged the young lawyers at the lecture to grasp the importance of this period and prepare themselves for a future where crypto rules financial system.
He said:” Every generation of lawyers inherits a legal system and is given the opportunity to improve it. Some generations are handed relatively calm seas. Others are handed storms. Your generation has been handed a storm of technological change, of economic uncertainty, of institutional challenge, of a world in which the old maps no longer match the territory.
“That is not a misfortune. It is an opportunity. The lawyers who will shape the Nigerian legal system of the next fifty years are in rooms like this one today. The judges who will decide the first major crypto currency cases before our courts are currently studying here today. The regulators who will draft the Digital Assets Act may be among you. The arbitrators who will resolve the first major block chain disputes on this continent may be sitting in this auditorium.
“You are not inheriting a finished system. You are inheriting an unfinished one. And that means your contribution matters more, not less.
” I have spoken today about regulation, about financial crime, about the naira, about arbitration, about institutional reform. But underneath all of it is a simpler proposition: that the law exists to serve justice to the people — particularly those most vulnerable to exploitation, most excluded from opportunity, most in need of frameworks that protect their rights and enable their economic participation.
“Cryptocurrency and digital assets, regulated well, could extend financial access to millions of Nigerians currently outside the formal economy. They could reduce the cost of remittances for diaspora families. They could provide small businesses with new financing mechanisms. They could make government spending more transparent and harder to steal.
“Regulated badly — or not regulated at all — they will continue to be instruments of fraud, of illicit finance, of speculative excess that enriches a few and impoverishes many.
The difference between those two outcomes will be determined, in large part, by the quality of the lawyers, the regulators, the legislators, and the judges who engage with these questions over the next decade.
You are those people.
“I began by saying this was a conversation about the future. It is more than that. It is a challenge. A challenge to your intellect, your preparation, and your sense of public duty. I hope you accept it.”
