The warning issued by the Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr Ola Olukoyede, on the growing threat of virtual asset and investment scams across Africa deserves urgent national reflection. In his address marking the 2025 African Union Anti-Corruption Day, Olukoyede drew attention to a rapidly expanding financial frontier that, while offering enormous opportunities, is being ruthlessly manipulated by fraudsters to exploit unsuspecting Nigerians.
Digital technologies, particularly virtual assets such as cryptocurrencies and digital tokens, are redefining the global financial ecosystem. However, as Olukoyede rightly noted, these tools, though not criminal by nature, have become convenient vehicles for criminal syndicates.
The promise of quick riches, aided by slick platforms and jargon-heavy pitch decks, has created fertile ground for deception. The infamous CBEX scam, cited by the EFCC, is a sobering reminder of what happens when public gullibility meets regulatory inertia.
What is deeply troubling is the growing number of ordinary Nigerians, many of them young and desperate to escape the trap of unemployment, falling victim to these scams.
Lured by the illusion of instant returns and emboldened by a general lack of awareness, they invest hard-earned money in bogus platforms that vanish overnight. Behind every fraudulent investment scheme lies not only a technical loophole but also a troubling educational gap.
Financial ignorance is now a national security risk. That is the harsh reality Nigeria must confront.
There is, therefore, an urgent need for a broad-based, state-led response to this rising threat. Financial literacy must be mainstreamed into our national development agenda. Schools, universities, trade unions, market associations, and youth organisations must all become part of a nationwide campaign to demystify virtual assets. As the EFCC has argued, no investment scam can succeed without the complicity of public negligence. It follows, then, that no prevention effort will work without public enlightenment.
But public education alone is not enough. There must also be regulatory adaptation. Nigeria’s financial regulators, including the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), must move faster than the fraudsters.
We need better surveillance, real-time tracking of transactions, and harsher penalties for digital con artists. Unregulated platforms must be named, shamed, and legally dismantled. The lines between traditional banking oversight and tech-based financial services must be redrawn to account for the changing realities of 21st-century commerce.
The EFCC deserves credit for sounding the alarm, but more will be demanded of it. The agency must continue to invest in digital forensics, cross-border cooperation, and capacity building. Its investigators need the tools and knowledge to keep pace with an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape.
For Nigeria, the cost of inaction is enormous. Beyond the personal tragedies of those who lose life savings to digital fraud, the national economy also suffers. Investor confidence erodes, trust in financial innovation weakens, and the promise of a tech-driven future begins to look like another trap for the vulnerable.
Virtual assets are not the enemy. Ignorance is. And it is time we treated it as a crisis worthy of a full-scale, coordinated response.
Let the warning from the EFCC not be just another soundbite lost in a noisy digital age. Let it mark the start of a determined national campaign to reclaim our financial future from the grip of deception.
