by Abiodun Oladokun
Abiodun is a crypto and on-chain research analyst with a specific focus on Africa.
Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently approved the launch and secondary trading of tokenized Nigerian equities on the NASD OTC Securities Exchange (NASD). The approval positions the over-the-counter venue to offer blockchain-based versions of traditional shares with its first public digital securities offering targeted for early September.
This regulatory green light comes as the global financial ecosystem witnesses a massive surge in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, which has fast become the primary bridge between traditional finance (TradFi) and the digital assets economy. Also, it has arrived at a time when Nigerian public equities are undergoing an unprecedented structural rally, with the NGX All-Share Index up over 50% in 2026 alone. Yet, despite these gains, capital in the form of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) flowing into Nigeria from international institutional investors remains overwhelmingly concentrated in money market instruments, with allocations to local equities remaining modest.
As the country opens up regulated on-chain equity rails, the pertinent question is whether Nigeria can do away with the frictions that have historically sidelined these foreign investors and open its $115 billion equity market to the same institutions that are currently over-allocated in its money market instruments.
Nigeria's Stock Market & The Tinubu Reform Engine
Public equities in Nigeria are witnessing one of their strongest rallies in modern history. According to Trading Economics, the benchmark NGX All-Share Index (ASI), which tracks the performance of all listed equities on the exchange, reached a historic high, trading above 250,000 points in May. While it has since consolidated to around 242,771 points, the market remains up roughly 56% year-to-date and has a 1-year return exceeding 68%.
Nigerian Stock Exchange All Share Index: Source: Trading Economics
Also, the total market capitalization has quadrupled in under three years of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's regime. On May 29, 2023, when he was sworn in, this stood at roughly $39 billion and has since rallied to over $115 billion as of the time of writing.
This growth traces back to two deeply unpopular fiscal policies. First, in his inaugural address in May 2023, Tinubu declared that "subsidy is gone," ending a petrol subsidy regime that had consumed several trillion naira a year. The immediate effect was a tripling of pump prices and a surge in transport and food costs. Second, in June 2023, his administration floated the Naira, dismantling an artificial multi-tier exchange rate regime in which the official rate was near ₦460/$ while the parallel market traded above ₦ 750/$1. The currency collapsed toward ₦1,600/$, and inflation surged past 30%.
However, on the upside, these policies fundamentally repriced the entire equity market. For example, companies earning in dollars or pricing against them saw their Naira revenues inflate mechanically as the currency fell. Also, financial institutions holding net-long foreign-currency assets record FX translation gains, significantly inflating their balance sheets. Then, in March 2024, the apex bank issued a recapitalization directive requiring commercial banks to raise fresh capital: ₦500 billion for banks with international authorization, ₦200 billion for national institutions, and ₦50 billion for regional licenses, setting a 24-month compliance window that closed in March 2026.
The requirement counted only paid-up capital and share premium, meaning banks could not rely on retained earnings and were forced to raise fresh equity. This triggered a wave of public offerings and rights issues that drove huge capital into listed bank stocks, making the financial sector the primary engine of the market's historic rally. Despite considerable returns over recent years, foreign portfolio investment (FPI) in local equities remains surprisingly subdued.
The Reality of Foreign Capital
Foreign portfolio investment has become the main channel through which foreign capital enters Nigeria. In a recent report from Nairametrics, total capital importation into the country in 2025 reached $24 billion, with portfolio flows accounting for $20 billion, representing over 85% of total foreign entry. By Q1 2026, this had climbed, with FPI accounting for an overwhelming 95% of the $10.37 billion in total imported capital during the three-month period. Despite the record returns posted by listed stocks over the past few years, international allocators have prioritized money market instruments over equity.
According to the Capital Importation Q1 2026 report published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), central bank-issued instruments such as Treasury Bills and Open Market Operation (OMO) bills accounted for the vast majority of portfolio allocations, drawing approximately $6.50 billion in Q1 2026.
Sovereign bonds captured the second-largest pool of offshore capital, with international investors directing $3.23 billion toward longer-dated Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) bonds in Q1 2026. Conversely, investments in listed equities remain remarkably muted. The report highlights that only about $132 million of the $10 billion in Q1 inflows went to equities, as investors favored fixed-income instruments during the review period.
Source: CBN via NBS, Capital Importation, ref. NGA-NBS-CAPIMP · Prism
This stark underallocation demonstrates that, despite the NGX delivering stellar local-currency returns recently, international investors remain exceptionally hesitant to take on Nigerian equity risk. This is due to several factors, including currency repatriation challenges, FX illiquidity, and corporate governance bottlenecks, which continue to keep large-scale foreign capital out of the equity market.
Tokenized Equities to the Rescue?
Tokenization has become one of the most talked-about ideas in crypto. At its simplest, it means issuing a blockchain-based token that represents ownership of a real-world asset — a bond, a treasury bill, a share, or real estate — so that the asset can be held, transferred, and settled on-chain. Total real-world asset (RWA) value on-chain has roughly doubled over the past year to around $24 billion, according to DefiLlama. Tokenized public equities, comprising listed stocks and ETFs in wrapped form, have become one of its fastest-growing segments, climbing nearly 700% over 12 months to a market value of about $2.6 billion. Platforms such as Kraken's xStocks, Binance's bStocks, and Ondo Finance now offer tokenized US equities that trade around the clock across chains to anyone in the world with a wallet.
As Africa's crypto economy records its strongest run ever, with more product launches, rising venture funding, and more governments moving toward clearer rules for digital assets, that same infrastructure is being turned toward local shares. In Kenya, the Nairobi Securities Exchange signed a memorandum with stablecoin issuer Tether in late July to test tokenization and instant settlement.
And in Nigeria, the Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the trading of tokenized shares and bonds on the NASD OTC Securities Exchange, the over-the-counter market for companies not listed on the NGX. NASD plans to launch the country's first public offering of digital securities in early September, aimed primarily at the small and medium-sized enterprises that struggle to access bank credit.
A separate venture, xNG Markets, is doing the same for Nigeria's blue chips. Ahead of a beta launch, it is wrapping names like MTN Nigeria, Dangote Cement, GTCO, and Zenith Bank as ERC-20 tokens for a global audience, each backed one-to-one by real shares held in segregated custody with a licensed, SEC-regulated broker.
The tokens are designed to trade 24/7 and can be moved, lent against, or used as collateral on-chain. On the surface, these two platforms bring Nigerian equities on-chain and make them tradable to anyone with a wallet.
However, the harder question remains whether wrapping a share actually removes the reasons foreign money has stayed away or simply moves them onto a new rail. Ryan K. Uche-Tasie, an intelligence analyst at LAVA, an Africa-focused Web3 and stablecoin venture fund, is skeptical that it removes them. "Tokenizing ownership means accepting someone else's definition of what's 'real,' which drags custodians, insurers, auditors and per-jurisdiction licenses back into the picture," he said.
According to him, "the token inherits the friction, and it doesn't remove the underlying risk," one of which is "getting dollars back out." Uche-Tasie further posits that the low free float of most stocks on the NGX is another issue that has kept foreign money out, and one challenge that tokenizing them may not solve.
Free float refers to the portion of a company's shares that are actually available for public trading. Many of Nigeria's largest listed companies operate with very low free floats. BUA Foods trades on a free float of about 4.7%, and Dangote Cement on under 10%. Both rank among the exchange's largest companies by market capitalisation, yet only a small fraction of their shares can be bought and sold by ordinary investors. Where the free float is thin, so is market depth. This makes the exchange less attractive to institutional investors, local and foreign, who need liquidity to enter and exit positions.
"Depth has to come from issuers releasing more stock or the market makers holding inventory. A token, unfortunately, conjures neither," the analyst opined.
On how much value the promise of a fractional equity token is to the average local investor, Uche-Tasie sees little in it: "It's close to nothing for domestic retail. They can already own a slice of the big names in local currency, and a blockchain wasn't what held them back."
The value, he says, "lives outside the country — 24/7 trading, funding in dollars or stablecoins, and borrowing against the book. That's a diaspora and cross-border proposition. This model only matters if it's selling local stocks to the rest of the world." If the proposition is cross-border, another important question to consider is which currency is used for settlement. If local equity is settled in dollars, "you've pulled the FX problem straight back into the trade," Uche-Tasie said.
Here, a local stablecoin, such as the Nigerian Naira-backed cNGN, may be useful. But Uche-Tasie sets a condition: "A local stablecoin only wins when moving between it and bank money feels like moving between two bank accounts."
However, cNGN is not quite there yet. "The rail is real but early, cNGN now sits around $145M of cumulative volume and has gone live on new networks, which tells you it exists but hasn't reached the size this needs," he added. As for the companies whose shares will be wrapped, Uche-Tasie expects them to co-opt the rail rather than fight it. Because issuers "can't simply mint their own equity," he notes, tokenization "routes through licensed venues and SPV-style wrappers… and the banks, as dealers in balance-sheet capacity, will want this rail running through them rather than around them."
