Young People, please calm down. I know that I went after your beloved Binance and many are not happy in this crypto age. But note this: asking the government to follow the law as written in the rule books should not make people feel bad. I am unbiased and I have no advocacy, what that means is that I do not take sides.
If the Nigerian government asked Binance to provide documents of its customers in Nigeria, through which it allegedly moved/traded $26 billion, that is fair game. Supporting the government on that should not make you unhappy. According to Premium Times, Binance is yet to provide those documents and as a result, the government was forced to detain the executives: “According to sources who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES Wednesday evening, the Nigerian authorities requested Binance executives to provide data relating to transactions involving the Nigerian Naira on the Binance platform in the last seven years. They also demanded that some other data relating to Nigeria be deleted from the Binance platform. However, the Binance executives insisted that they should be taken to their respective countries’ embassies before they could comply.”
To read me, you have to be objective. I try to be fair and balanced, critiquing and commending the government based on how I interpret policies. As I have said, I do not need anything from any politician or government in Nigeria because God has blessed. My only desire is that Nigeria works, so that others will benefit from Nigeria, because Nigeria worked for me. I have nothing against Tinubu, Buhari or anyone; I sing praises if they do well, and lead a charge against them if otherwise. That is the way to understand me.
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Let us allow our government to do its work, reminding it to follow due process. If a Nigerian is arrested in London or New York, we do not accuse their governments of being stupid. So, why should we do the same on our own? If you read PT report, you can see that what Nigeria is accusing Binance was the same thing the US Government accused it which lead to its CEO pleading guilty: “Binance did not implement comprehensive know-your-customer (KYC) protocols or systematically monitor transactions, and Binance never filed a suspicious activity report (SAR) with FinCEN”.
That Binance collected your ID did not mean anything if it could not provide as required by law. That said, Nigeria’s problem is not Binance or AbokiFX. I have been consistent since June 2023 that the floating of Naira is a bad policy, because you do not float what you cannot control. By floating the Naira when we have limited supply of US dollars, the future of Naira is imperiled.
So, all the garagara with Binance, AkokiFX, etc will not fix the root cause of Nigeria’s FX problem which is: we need to do things which can reduce demand for USD or/and generate more USD. Look left and right, it is not a finance-first playbook, but a manufacturing/production one. In other words, Nigeria should arrest and detain factories in Aba, Ibadan, Kano, Uyo, etc and force them to produce things, for Naira to breathe.
For Binance, I have no problems with it; it possibly will not have any problem once it provides the documents which I do think it has. And once it does, Nigeria will likely see the list and will do nothing because some “do not touch names” will likely be in that list. Next week, another scene will open … and the play continues.
Young People, please calm down. I know that I went after your beloved Binance. But note this: asking the government to follow the law as written in the rule books should not make people feel bad. I am unbiased and I have no advocacy, what that means is that I do not take sides.… pic.twitter.com/ZBjYaJYBxw
— Ndubuisi Ekekwe (@ndekekwe) February 29, 2024
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Which one is insisting on being taken to their respective embassies before they would comply, is that a joke or serious talk? So, if Russia or the US arrests you, you tell their security guys where to take you before you behave? Quite insulting.
For any economy to work well, both the monetary and fiscal regimes will play their parts, one alone cannot do it. Having factories and producing things alone cannot cure all the maladies, you also need a working monetary regime for the factories to remain in business.
When you have N20M in your hand and don’t know where to put it, it could be enough for someone who wants to set up a small starch processing plant, but because you hear about Binance and that it’s possible to trade their and turn the N20M to N40M, you then take it to Binance and start trading currencies. The small starch processing plant will not be built, which would have counted as production. Can we see how one thing affects the other? This is just one example, I can keep replicating across industries and our behavioural tendencies.
To think that all humans are capable of making sound decisions is a fallacy, there wouldn’t be need for governance systems if that were to be the case.
Nigeria must win, no apologies.