Nigeria just made operating digital asset businesses, fintechs, and investment intermediation a rich kids’ sport.
On the morning of January 16, 2026, Nigeria’s Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), the capital markets regulator, published new capital requirements for almost every capital market player in the space, including brokers, robo-advisors, investment advisors, and digital asset stakeholders, received a bump—some over 2x, but most of them over 50% increases.
In the memo, the SEC described the new thresholds as “minimum capital requirement,” meaning these are required sums stakeholders must have in paid-up capital (shares issued and paid for) plus share premiums. The SEC director general, Emomotimi Agama, later came on CNBC’s Closing Bell podcast to say that the goal is to ensure investor confidence in the capital markets.
“The fundamental reason is to raise long-term capital, and that can only happen with confidence, [which] stems out of sustainability, resilience, transparency, and integrity. For 2026, we are going to be more stringent on making sure that enforcement actions are carried out, and market participants begin to see the ability of the SEC and the regulators [to protect] them from challenges that, hitherto, have been usual happenings within the market,” said Agama.
At the start of January, Nigeria’s stock market index crossed ₦100 trillion ($70 billion) in capitalisation for the first time, hinting that more investor confidence is returning, and the market participants must be accountable, from the SEC’s position.
Yet, why was the digital asset sector, an emerging industry with a less-defined regulatory framework, lumped with the others? Recall that in 2025, Nigeria classified digital assets as “securities,” under the Investment and Securities Act, subjecting them to the SEC’s purview. Instead of providing the market with a predictable licencing and operating framework, the SEC has opted for market control by filtering who comes in and who stays out.
We won’t play genies and tell you that we’ve looked into the future to see that this is a good or bad idea. But the real question here is whether raising minimum capital requirements is the tightest way to protect investors without narrowing the market, especially a capital market that still needs competition, innovation, and smaller intermediaries to deepen liquidity rather than concentrate it in fewer, larger hands.
