A private school in Kano State has started accepting school fees payment in cryptocurrencies, Peoples Gazette learnt Thursday afternoon.

School Principal of New Oxford Science Academy, Sabi’u Musa Haruna, confirmed the development to The Gazette on Thursday evening, saying the decision was made to ease payment of school fees.

Mr Haruna said, “We took the decision to make it easy for parents to pay their children’s school fees, and concerning the fact that these digital  currencies in the next few years  will dominate other currencies all over the world and Nigeria will have its digital currency by December, this year.”

Mr Haruna further said the decision was taken based on the announcement by the Central Bank of Nigeria to introduce digital currency in the country by December this year.

“The CBN governor made the announcement. So, we decided that since it is something that is not new, and it is a welcome development, we decided to embrace it, before it becomes too late for us,” the school principal told The Gazette in a telephone interview.

Mr Haruna noted that other countries like El-Salvador and Tanzania had long been receiving cryptocurrency in their schools. He urged the federal government to quickly embrace the system and regularise it.

The Gazette learnt that school fees for students in primary school costs N10,000 while those in secondary school pay N15,000. 

The school opened in  2017.

In early February, the CBN ordered banks and other financial institutions to close all customers’ accounts used in trading cryptocurrencies and other related transactions, The Gazette reported.

The Gazette also reported that banks also blocked some accounts of customers involved in crypto transactions.

Nigerians have since knocked President Buhari over the decision.

In June, Rakiya Mohammed, director of information technology at CBN, disclosed that the government will soon announce the date for the launching of its own digital currency.

Ms Mohammed said that the government had used two years to study the technology and has also identified its risk, disclosing that the government is setting up a central governance structure that would involve all industry stakeholders to assess all the risks as it proceeds with implementation.