The Nigerian Presidency has again blamed cryptocurrency platform, Binance for the free fall of the naira.
This is the position of Presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga who disclosed that Binance will destroy the Nigerian economy by arbitrarily fixing foreign exchange rate if not stopped.
The Matrix reports that Binance has been flagged in several countries including UK, Japan, Canada and Singapore for flouting regulatory framework and causing disruptions in the currency market.
In the US alone, the platform was made to pay $4.3 billion for violations of anti-money laundering and sanctions laws leading to the resignation of Changpeng Zhao as the Chief Executive Officer of the platform.
In June 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said the operation of Binance Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of Binance, was illegal.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olayemi Cardoso, had dropped a bombshell that illicit flows in the form of crypto exchanges passed through Binance.
“We are concerned that certain practices go on that indicate illicit flows going through a number of these entities [crypto platforms] and suspicious flows at best,” Cardoso told reporters at the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting of the apex bank, the first since he assumed office in September 2023.
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“In the case of Binance, in the last one year alone, $26bn has passed through Binance Nigeria from sources and users who we cannot adequately identify,” he added.
Reacting to these developments, a displeased Onanuga while appearing on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Wednesday disclosed that if Nigeria don’t clamp down on Binance, Binance will destroy the economy of this country. They just fix the rate.
“We have saboteurs. Look at what Binance is doing to our economy. That is why the government moved against Binance. Some people sit down using cyberspace to dictate even our exchange rate, hijacking the role of the CBN.
“They just sit down and fix anything they like. It’s a sabotage and we are trying to prevent that from happening henceforth,” he stated.
The presidential aide further urged Nigerians to stop patronising the parallel market for FX rates, saying the website of the apex bank is the only legal platform.
“The parallel market is not the real gauge of Nigeria’s economic health. The parallel market is an illegal market.
“I don’t even know why Nigerians and the media are feeding on the parallel market. That is not where we should go; what’s the CBN rate? As of Friday, the rate for the dollar was about N1600.
READ ALSO: Shocker! About $26 billion passed through Binance Nigeria – Cardoso
“Even in the so-called parallel market, the exchange rate is stabilizing there and that is what these needs are. Our economy is too dollarised. Importers are looking at the exchange rate and using it to fix prices, some of them arbitrarily, some of them actually profiteering,” Onanuga stated.
According to him, once the CBN succeeds in stabilising the exchange rate, the prices of goods in the country will normalise. “Things are not going to get worse, they are going to get better in the next few weeks,” he noted.
