Vanguard News

ABUJA—Transactions on the e-Naira platform has risen to 700,000 valued at N8 billion, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, disclosed yesterday.

Addressing participants of the 28th Annual Executive Seminar of the organization, in Abuja, Emefiele said that the CBN digital currency was a huge success and had attracted other countries who now seek the bank’s assistance to also introduce theirs.

He said:  “A major turning point in the Bank’s digitisation journey in the last decade, is the launch, on 25 October 2021, of the eNaira, Nigeria’s central bank digital currency, CBDC.

”The eNaira was developed to broaden the payment possibilities of Nigerians, foster digital financial inclusion, with potential for fast-tracking intergovernmental and social transfers, capital flow and remittances, among other endless possibilities.

“Since its launch, a total of N8 billion, consisting of over 700,000 transactions, has passed through the eNaira platform. As part of the bank’s effort to further integrate and broaden the usage of the eNaira, it was assigned an Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, USSD, code, enabling payments by simply dialling ‘*997#’ on a mobile phone.”

Emefiele who was represented by the Deputy-Governor, Financial Systems Stability, Mrs. Aisha Ahmad, said the innovations introduced by his team were already winning laurels, but noted that CBN would not become complacent.

“The bank recently received the coveted Euroknowledge Award in Washington DC for leadership in innovation and digital transformation in Africa. This feat is the outcome of a disciplined implementation of long-standing strategies, beginning with the bank’s vision of a cashless society and the continued modernisation of the country’s payments system and financial landscape.

“I am proud to announce to you today (yesterday) that the CBN-CBDC has been attracting accolades across the globe as a monumental success. Our digital currency topped the charts on retail CBDCs projects globally as at April 2022 (PwC, 2022) and several central banks across the globe have been requesting for our success template on the eNaira. 

”The story of the eNaira has been one of courage, persistence and commitment, by dedicated staff and management to explore new frontiers and possibilities.

“However, we are not resting on our oars, given our targets and the challenges earlier noted.  This also underscores the importance of this seminar in our search for workable ideas and possible solutions,” he said.

The CBN boss added that as part of the digitization drive, the bank had taken transformational steps in entrenching a culture of big data and data analytics, as tools for effective policy making in the bank.

He said:  “To this end, the CBN Data Architecture Project, CeDAP, code-named ‘Project OXYGEN’, was commissioned with the objectives of providing a repository of a variety of data from different sources; facilitating real time data analytics to drive business intelligence and support economic policy decisions, optimising the cost of operations for data management; and improving analytics competencies of members of staff, among others.

“In furtherance of the project’s objective, economic dashboards were created with data from the financial system, providing insights on the bank’s operations. Over the years, the bank has been able to generate and aggregate high frequency and granular macroeconomic data on the economy, in collaboration with external stakeholders. 

”These data serve as input in the decision-making process, enabling data and evidence-driven policies.”