The House of Representatives held a public hearing on 2 March 2026 on a bill seeking to establish a Nigerian Fintech Regulatory Commission, convening a joint committee spanning five standing panels — digital and electronic banking, banking regulations, science and technology, communications, and capital market and institutions — to receive submissions from industry operators, regulators, and consumer groups on a proposal that would fundamentally reshape oversight of the country’s most dynamic financial sector. The bill, sponsored by Hon. Fuad Kayode Laguda, is premised on the observation that nearly 400 fintech firms currently operate in Nigeria without a single statutory authority focused exclusively on their activities, a gap that its proponents argue exposes consumers, investors, and the digital economy to structural risk. House Speaker Tajudeen Abbas, who framed the hearing as an effort to gather input from across the ecosystem, stressed that the proposed commission is not intended to compete with or replace existing regulators, but would instead function as a complementary mechanism deferring to primary authorities in their core areas of responsibility.
The bill would consolidate oversight currently fragmented across the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Information Technology Development Agency, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission, and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission into a single, specialised statutory body. OPay’s vice-president of public and government affairs, Maxwell Loko, warned that without precise delineation of roles, a parallel regulator risked duplicating licensing processes, generating overlapping supervisory examinations, raising compliance costs, and creating regulatory uncertainty that could discourage investment — a concern shared by several fintech operators at the hearing. The managing director of FairMoney Microfinance Bank, Henry Obiekea, illustrated the tension concretely, noting that under the proposed framework the CBN would continue determining what a microfinance bank could charge customers while the new commission would govern how those charges were communicated and justified, introducing regulatory duplication and complex compliance coordination.
The Chief Compliance Officer of Hydrogen Payment Services Company, Mojisola Ologe, welcomed the formal recognition of digital finance as a distinct sector but urged lawmakers to clearly delineate the commission’s powers, warning that without a defined scope and non-derogation clauses, operators could face conflicting compliance obligations and higher regulatory costs. She also recommended alignment with the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 and proposed the establishment of a Fintech Regulatory Appeals Tribunal to strengthen investor confidence. On the other side of the debate, the acting president of the Association of Mobile Money and Bank Agents in Nigeria, Obioha Otti, endorsed the proposal, saying regulation must evolve to keep pace with rapid expansion in the fintech ecosystem and calling for POS and mobile money agents to be formally incorporated into whatever framework emerges.
The CBN’s conspicuous silence throughout the process is the most politically significant undercurrent of the bill’s progression. The apex bank did not respond to requests for comment even as the bill advanced — a silence made notable by the fact that passage would effectively place a new statutory body alongside, and in some areas above, an institution that currently exercises primary regulatory authority over mobile money operators, payment service providers, and digital banking platforms. Nigeria is Africa’s largest fintech market and the bill, if passed, would be among the most consequential pieces of digital economy legislation on the continent, with implications for licensing, investment flows, and consumer protection across a sector that has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign funding in recent years. Lawmakers indicated that deliberations would continue after a review of all stakeholder submissions.
