- Nigeria has set up critical legal frameworks that would enable the creation of a robust global financial market, and hopefully position the country to actualising the tall dream of an Africa’s financial hub mulled several years ago.
- Three critical bills that would give a push to the project include the Nigerian International Financial Centre (NIFC) establishment bill; Financial Ombudsman Commission Bill, and a bill to enable the use of information in Electronic form for Conducting Transactions and for connected purposes, were passed at the last minute by the seventh National Assembly.
- Nigeria’s dream of evolving an International Financial Centre (IFC) is the high point of the realisation of the Financial System Strategy (FSS) 2020, which seeks to make Nigeria the safest and fastest growing financial system among emerging economies.
- Championed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in collaboration with other key financial system regulators, FSS 2020 objectives include to strengthen the Nigerian domestic financial markets; enhance their integration with external financial markets, and engineer Nigeria’s evolution into an IFC.
- Oluwatoyin Jokosenumi, Head, Programme Management office, FSS 2020, describes NIFC as the platform for enhancing economic development, saying Nigeria has chosen the engineered model that is relevant for a developing country, especially in attracting external investments like the Dubai and Singapore experience.
“The benefits of an IFC abound. It would allow international players to come into the Nigeria market and help in development. The possible inflows are unimaginable if you look at the way Dubai was transformed and how financial centre catalysed the economy,” said Jokosenumi
Source: Business Day
