Koko Maxwella 
ABUJA, Nigeria — The Senate has warned that Nigeria’s rapidly expanding digital finance ecosystem poses growing systemic risks to the economy due to weak supervision of large fintechs whose scale now rivals traditional financial institutions.
The caution came during Thursday’s debate on an amendment to the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act (BOFIA) 2020. Sponsored by Senator Adetokunbo Abiru and supported by the Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions, the bill seeks to empower the Central Bank of Nigeria to formally designate and regulate Systemically Important Institutions (SIIs), including major fintech firms.
Abiru said Nigeria’s financial landscape has undergone a “dramatic transformation,” with mobile money operators, switching companies, digital lenders and payment service banks now serving tens of millions of users and processing massive transaction volumes daily. He warned that although BOFIA recognises systemically important banks, the law does not anticipate that fintechs could pose risks equal to, or even greater than, those of mid-sized banks.
“Some fintechs now operate at scales that rival mid-tier banks. Their data holdings carry national security implications, yet we cannot say with certainty where that data is stored or who has access to it,” he said, citing opaque ownership structures and offshore servers.
He also referenced the April 2024 onboarding freeze imposed on several fintechs over KYC, AML and suspicious-transaction concerns, describing it as proof that “the scale of these institutions has outgrown existing regulatory tools.”
Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan added a social dimension, highlighting growing income disparities among Nigerian creators working on global digital platforms. She cited “huge discrepancies,” including instances where Nigerian creators earned as little as 50 cents per 1,000 Facebook views, compared with $10–$30 paid to U.S. creators.
The bill passed Second Reading and was referred to committee for further legislative review.
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Mirian Gom 
Otamere Gladness 
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Oluwatobi Adu