It started with a whisper in the hallowed chambers of the National Assembly, where Hon. Olufemi Bamisile expressed visible shock at the ownership structures of the fintech giants currently dominating our economy.
Then, it exploded onto our phone screens via a viral TikTok video by @iswellthecapitalist, stating the obvious but uncomfortable truth: The biggest bank in Nigeria today in terms of ubiquity and reliability is not the FUGAZ banks – It is OPay.
But here is the jagged pill we must swallow: The entity that has effectively become the custodian of the Nigerian street economy is not Nigerian. It is a Chinese-owned behemoth.Here’s a hard fact – No one can deny that the Chinese players, OPay, PalmPay, or their Nigerian contemporaries – Kuda, Paga and Moniepoint have succeeded where our traditional banks failed.
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When the servers of the “big boys” on Marina spluttered, the fintech duly delivered. They have kept small businesses alive – from the woman selling roasted yam in Yaba to the Mallam wheeling fruits and vegetables on his cart – connected to the digital economy.
But there’s a heavy and pertinent question that needs to be asked, especially in the light of the hegemonic dominance of foreign owned and led financial institutions. Is our collective slumber regarding the implications of handing over our critical financial infrastructure to a foreign entity with opaque ties to a state apparatus known for weaponizing data really okay?
We are talking about over 50 million registered users and a staggering 9 trillion Naira in monthly transaction value. We have created a “too-big-to-fail” monopoly. But unlike the monopolies of old, the control room for this one isn’t in Lagos or Abuja.
It traces back to Beijing in what J Meservey calls “potential vectors of Chinese surveillance and influence.” Enter Zhou Yahui, a Chinese billionaire and entrepreneur. While foreign investment is usually welcome, we must ask the tough questions about the pedigree of the capital. Mr. Yahui was part of the Beijing Kunlun consortium that acquired Opera. Why does this matter? In 2019, the United States government, citing national security concerns, forced Beijing Kunlun to sell Grindr, a popular dating app. The U.S. realized that allowing a Chinese firm access to the location data, private messages, and HIV status of millions of Americans was a vulnerability they could not afford. If a dating app is considered a national security threat, what do we call an app that holds the Bank Verification Numbers (BVN), spending habits, geolocation, and the entire financial history of 50 million Nigerians?
Data is the new oil, and currently, we are piping ours directly to a foreign refinery. By controlling the payment rails, a foreign entity possesses the ability to map the economic heartbeat of Nigeria. They know who pays whom, where the money moves, and where the economic clusters are. In the age of algorithmic warfare and economic espionage, this is not just business; this is leverage. We have seen the global warnings. From Huawei to ZTE, and Hikvision to Dahua, even TikTok the pattern of Chinese technology firms serving as conduits for state intelligence is well-documented by bodies like the Carnegie Endowment. Are we arrogant enough to think Nigeria is immune? Or perhaps, there’s anyone thinking for Nigeria? We must ask hypothetically, if a diplomatic row ensues between Nigeria and China tomorrow, can a switch be flipped in a server room thousands of miles away, crippling our informal economy instantly?
Or have we inadvertently handed the keys to the kingdom to a landlord we do not fully understand? It is time for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and our security agencies to look beyond the “financial inclusion” metrics and scrutinize the “national exclusion” reality. Here’s another uncomfortable truth – we cannot celebrate the efficiency of these platforms while ignoring the nationality of the puppet master.We need a regulatory framework that ensures our data remains sovereign. We need to know that the servers housing the financial destiny of the Nigerian market woman are not accessible to foreign engineers with allegiance to a foreign flag. All over the world, countries pay critical attention to matters of this nature. The efficiency of these apps are sweet, yes. But let us ensure that in our hunger for fast transactions, we have not sold our birthright for a mess of digital pottage.
……Emmannuel Adeniyi is a public analyst from Kaduna
