The rave around Nigeria’s e-Naira seems to be on the waning side as research has disclosed that a lot of Nigerians, especially the youths, favor cryptocurrencies more. The e-Naira, was introduced by President Muhammadu Buhari, on 25 October 2021, and it has seen more than 100 thousand downloads on the Google Play Store alone after the Central Bank of Nigeria -CBN badmouthed and criticized cryptocurrencies, and tagged them as unregulated.
While introducing the nation’s first digital currency, President Buhari disclosed that the currency and its underlying blockchain infrastructure could multiply the nation’s GDP, by about 29 billion dollars in 10 years. The President also announced that the launch of the e-Naira will aid his administration to send direct payments to Nigerians that were eligible for specific welfare programs together with fostering cross-border trade.
CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, had also disclosed that during the period the e-Naira platform went live, there had been a lot of interest and overwhelming feedback from citizens in the country and other parties across the globe with more than 2.5 million visits to the website daily.
But, several months after its debut, interest in the digital currency in the country has noticeably trended downwards in rapid succession as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies started their rise during the same period. For example, according to information gotten from Google, interest in the e-Naira was at 43 index points while interest in cryptocurrencies was at 41 index points as about 2021. But, as of March 26, 2022, interest was fewer than 1 index point while more than 33 million Nigerians traded on crypto as of April 2022.
