‘If we don’t stop them, Binance will destroy Nigeria’s Economy’ – Bayo Onanuga

A Presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, says that cryptocurrency trading website, Binance, will destroy Nigeria’s economy by arbitrarily fixing foreign exchange rate, if they are not stopped.

Bayo Onanuga revealed this while speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday night.

“If we don’t clamp down on Binance, Binance will destroy the economy of this country. They just fix the rate.

“We have saboteurs. Look at what Binance is doing to our economy. That is why the government moved against Binance. Some people sit down using the cyberspace to dictate even our exchange rate, hijacking the role of the CBN.

“They just sit down and fix anything they like. It’s a sabotage and we are trying to prevent that from happening henceforth”.

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Bayo Onanuga aide further urged Nigerians to stop patronizing the parallel market for FX rates, saying the website of the Central bank is the only legal platform.

“The parallel market is not the real gauge of Nigeria’s economic health. The parallel market is an illegal market.

“I don’t even know why Nigerians and the media are feeding on the parallel market. That is not where we should go; what’s the CBN rate? As at Friday, the rate for the dollar was about N1600.

“Even in the so-called parallel market, the exchange rate is stabilizing there and that is what this needs. Our economy is too much dollarized. Importers are looking at the exchange rate and using it to fix prices, some of them arbitrarily, some of them actually profiteering”.

Bayo Onanuga‘s comments comes after the federal government recently banned the website of Binance and other major crypto trading platforms in the country, following allegations of manipulation of the foreign exchange rate.