If we didn’t go after Binance, Nigeria’s economy would be destroyed: Presidency

“We were told that if we don’t clampdown on Binance, Binance will destroy the economy of this country.”

Ahmed Oluwasanjo • February 28, 2024

Bayo Onanuga and Binance logo

President Bola Tinubu’s government justified its clampdown on Binance on Wednesday, accusing the cryptocurrency platform of sabotaging and destroying Nigeria’s economy.

“Look at what Binance is doing to our economy. That’s why the government moved against Binance,” said Bayo Onanuga, media aide to the President.

“Some people sit down on the cyberspace to determine our exchange rate, hijacking the role of the CBN. They just sit down and fix what they like.”

Mr. Onanuga disclosed this in an interview with Channels TV on Wednesday night, a few hours after Nuhu Ribadu, the national security adviser, detained two executives of the crypto exchange platform, confiscating their international passports.

Citing Financial Times, Peoples Gazette reported that the two executives of Binance detained by Nigerian authorities were invited by the Nigerian government.

But Mr Onanuga said the Tinubu-led government was informed that Binance would cripple Nigeria’s economy if they didn’t clamp down on the cryptocurrency platform.

“We were told that if we don’t clampdown on Binance, Binance will destroy the economy of this country. They just fix the rate. It is a sabotage,” Mr Onanuga said.

Olayemi Cardoso, Central Bank of Nigeria governor, had on Tuesday, during the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in Abuja, said over $26 billion passed through Binance in the past one year.

In the past week, federal authorities had clamped down on cryptocurrency platforms while raiding Bureau de Change nationwide in a bid to stabilise the declining Nigerian naira.

Last week, Binance confirmed it was working with the Tinubu-led government to block dollar-naira trading on the platform. In the same week, the government blocked access to the Binance website by Nigerian users.

On Wednesday, Binance disabled its peer-to-peer function for Nigerian users. Peer-to-peer function, popularly known as P2P, allows users, buyers and sellers to trade without third-party interference.

With the disabling of the P2P function for Nigerian users, Nigerians might no longer trade on Binance.

The Gazette also noticed that the Nigerian currency was unavailable on Binance on Wednesday.

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