A public finance and governance expert, Professor Chiwuike Uba, blames weak financial regulation for the collapse of the CBEX platform, which has trapped over N1.3 trillion in Nigerian investment. The digital asset trading platform, promising a 100% return, recently imploded, leaving many investors across various socioeconomic groups with substantial losses. Uba, lead Economic Research and Analyst for the Afri-Heritage Institute, made this statement in Enugu on Tuesday.
The collapse of CBEX, according to Professor Uba, is not just financial fraud but a national crisis exposing critical flaws in Nigeria’s financial oversight. He argues that the platform’s unchecked operation—despite promising a 100% return in 30 days—and lack of regulatory intervention from the SEC, CBN, and EFCC demonstrates a serious failure of predictive surveillance, inter-agency coordination, and investor protection. This debacle, he says, highlights the vulnerabilities of Nigeria’s rapidly evolving digital finance sector and the costly consequences of regulatory inaction. CBEX’s success, he notes, wasn’t due to innovation, but rather the regulatory bodies’ inability to adapt to the speed, scale, and complexity of the digital financial landscape.
Professor Uba criticizes Nigeria’s outdated financial regulations, arguing that they are ill-equipped to handle the rapid growth of digital finance. He contends that the current system, focused on reactive measures after fraud occurs, is failing. Instead, he advocates for a proactive regulatory framework with real-time monitoring, inter-agency collaboration, and a central registry to verify platform legitimacy. The current fragmented approach, where regulatory bodies operate in silos, allows fraudulent platforms like CBEX to thrive, causing significant harm before being detected. He calls for a preventive model, emphasizing surveillance, risk management, and public education as integral parts of the regulatory process.