Giants, no more, but even Dwarfs are still seen when they mingle.

So, Nigeria is on the verge of becoming an island, separating itself from the rest of the world. This is the forecast to be realized if the course of the current journey is not changed to follow the trends and tides of the prevailing technology. Recently, there was a lot of uprising and criticism of the unexpected ban of support for Cryptocurrency trading imposed on the banks and Fintechs by the Central Bank of Nigeria. All these critics and international condemnation only led to one thing, a rushed response by the CBN with several pages of debunked claims to support their biased moves. Nothing factual, but we all know this is strictly political and has the hands of the interim government all over it.

In a recent interview with Femi Falana, a senior Advocate of Nigeria appearing on Channels Television, he referenced the various regretted involvement of the arms of government in matters that purely doesn’t have a legal base. He expresses his hope that by the time the dust settles on the current abuse of power, the CBN will never again involve itself in what is purely a political matter so that the bank that is meant to be autonomous and independent will remain to perform its primary responsibility and function as the bank of the government.

So, how does this new island come into action and what are the present factors supporting the forecast? First, we are not strangers to how incapacitated the whole country was during the pandemic. Several lessons are there for the wise to learn, just the wise. With nothing going outside of the country and only loans coming in, for the supposed wise to embezzle (I hope they keep the loot in foreign currency). With this, the world continues to go digital to enable varieties of interactions and transactions to exist remotely, with no contact between countries and continents. Rather for some set of old folks to see the greenlight to make haste in actively studying and adopting these time-tested solutions, they saw a red light, not even the orange. How backward! They halted when the world continued to advance around them.

Secondly, about the world advancing around them. Giant companies like Paypal among others have long and perhaps in some cases recently announced support for crypto transactions. Now, from the first paragraph of the recent publication on Mastercard reads” Whatever your opinions on cryptocurrencies — from a dyed-in-wool fanatic to utter skeptic — the fact remains that these digital assets are becoming a more important part of the payments world.” I think this refers to the Nigerian biased leaders and government. Then, followed by the summary facts that MasterCard will be bringing crypto into its network. Can you picture the island already? Will they prohibit Mastercard from operating in the country? And if Visa joins, will they do the same. Of course, we will still have our local Verve.

We as a community with no government support already were catching up to the moving train of speedy innovations of the 4th industrial revolution. Now, with such forces of the government trying to halt this so much momentum of effort. if we give in, the world will not only leave us behind, but the country as we know it will be an island unable to interact meaningfully with the rest of the world. Now, that is an “Island” we do not want to be on. We operate a mixed system of economy and have for a long time depended less on the Government, not for Education, Water, Power, Jobs and not even for Security. What do you think is the way forward?