200,000 wallets had been downloaded, of which 156,700 were consumer wallets. The figure is expected to increase over the near future as the government, together with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) continues to intensify awareness on the CBDC.
According to President Buhari, this major initiative is expected to expand the country’s GDP by a whopping US$29 billion over the next decade. “CBDCs can also help increase remittances, foster cross border trade, improve financial inclusion, make monetary policy more effective, and enable the government to send direct payments to citizens eligible for specific welfare programmes,” he noted.
The Nigerian leader also went on to assure the public regarding the safety and scalability of the eNaira, pointing out that the journey to launch CBDC began in 2017.
These views were echoed by CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele, who revealed that over the past four years the central bank had conducted extensive research, consultations and testing of the CBDC concept in what is known as a ‘Sandbox environment’, which is an isolated virtual machine in which potentially unsafe software code can be executed without risking harm to network resources or local applications.
According to the central bank Governor, the new CBDC will support a resilient payment ecosystem, reduce the cost of processing cash, encourage rapid financial inclusion and increase revenue and tax collection.
“Therefore, the eNaira is Nigeria’s CBDC and it is the digital equivalent of the physical naira. As the tagline simply encapsulates, the eNaira is the same naira with far more possibilities,” he added. “The eNaira – like the physical naira – is a legal tender in Nigeria and a liability of the CBN. The eNaira and naira will have the same value and will always be exchanged at one naira to one eNaira.”
