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By Chinwendu Obienyi
The buzz around Nigeria’s e-Naira seems to be on the decline as investigations by Daily Sun revealed that most Nigerians, especially youths prefer cryptocurrencies.
The e-Naira, launched by President Muhammadu Buhari, on October 25, 2021, recorded more than 100,000 thousand downloads on Google Play Store alone following the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) onslaught against cryptocurrencies, tagged as “unregulated”.
While launching Nigeria’s first digital currency, Buhari noted that the currency and its underlying block-chain infrastructure can increase the country’s GDP, by $29 billion in 10 years.
The President also declared that introduction of the e-Naira will enable his government send direct payments to citizens eligible for specific welfare programmes as well as foster cross-border trade.
He said that alongside digital innovations, digital currencies could foster growth through better economic activities, increase remittances, improve financial inclusion and make monetary policy more effective.
Also speaking during the launch, CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, revealed that since the e-Naira platform went live, there have been overwhelming interest and encouraging response from Nigerians and other parties across the world with over 2.57 million daily visits to the website.
He said 33 banks were fully integrated and live on the platform, adding that N500 million had been successfully minted by the bank, with N200 million issued to financial institutions, while over 2,000 customers were already on board.
With these words, Nigerians’ interest momentarily outpaced that of cryptocurrencies, indicating that the e-Naira launch had a broad appeal and that most Nigerians were eager to see what the CBN could offer. However, months after its launch, interest in Nigeria’s digital currency noticeably quickly started to trend downwards rapidly as against Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies which rose around the same period. For example, according to data obtained from Google, interest in the e-Naira was at 43 index points while interest in cryptocurrencies was at 41 index points in 2021. However, as at March 26 2022, interest was less than 1 index point while 33.4 million Nigerians trade on crypto as at April 2022.
