A public finance and governance expert, Prof. Chiwuike Uba, has faulted weak financial and economic regulatory agencies’ oversight for the loss of over N1.3 trillion by Nigerians due to the crash of CBEX.

CBEX, a digital asset trading platform with an assurance of 100 per cent return on investment, operating in Nigeria for some years recently collapsed and trapped over N1.3 trillion invested by Nigerians of all strata in the platform.

Uba, who is also the lead Economic Research and Analyst for Afri-Heritage Institute, Enugu, said this in a statement in Enugu on Tuesday.

According to him, the collapse of CBEX is not just another unfortunate episode of financial fraud—it is a national crisis and a resounding indictment of the structural weaknesses within Nigeria’s financial oversight architecture.

He said, “The CBEX incident must serve not merely as a cautionary tale but as a clarion call for comprehensive and strategic reform of the country’s regulatory and investor protection systems.

“Despite CBEX’s outrageous promise of 100 per cent return on investment in just 30 days, the platform operated publicly, unchecked and at significant scale.

“That it did so without attracting swift regulatory or legal attention from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), or the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) reflects more than negligence.

“It underscores the absence of predictive surveillance mechanisms, effective inter-agency coordination, and a proactive investor protection mandate across Nigeria’s financial regulatory bodies.

“This debacle has now exposed not only the vulnerabilities of a growing digital finance landscape, but also the heavy costs of institutional inertia.”

The don noted that CBEX did not thrive because of innovation—it thrived because regulatory agencies are currently unequipped to govern the speed, scope and complexity of digital finance in Nigeria.

Uba said that while financial technology continues to revolutionise how citizens access and utilize money, Nigeria’s regulatory framework had remained rooted in analogue-era tools and outdated statutes.

“Today’s digital investment ecosystem requires more than static compliance checks or periodic audits. It demands real-time monitoring, cross-agency intelligence sharing, and data-driven enforcement mechanisms.

“But Nigeria continues to operate under a fragmented model, where agencies function in silos, with limited authority to intervene early, and even less capacity to enforce coordinated action across platforms.

“Platforms like CBEX exploit this vacuum masterfully. In the absence of a centralised registry of licensed operators, the average Nigerian has no clear way of verifying the legitimacy of digital asset promoters.

“And because there is no central alert system or public fraud watchlist for high-risk platforms, schemes are often only “discovered” after they collapse—when damage has already been done,” he said.

According to him, the current case at hand is a regulatory system reacting to crime, not preventing it.

“It is high time Nigeria made the shift to a preventive governance model, where surveillance, risk mitigation, and public education are built into the regulatory DNA,” Uba stated.