The candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 presidential election, Prince Adewale Adebayo, has thrown his weight behind the Federal Government for sanctioning the cryptocurrency exchange company, Binance.
He noted that as long as the company operates in Nigeria, it must respect the country’s law.
Adebayo who made his position known in interview with journalists in Abuja, called on Nigerians to support the policy, saying “When it has to do with your government and any foreign entity, your government is always on track.
“So let us have this attitude first, because if Binance is being sanctioned by South Africa, Russia, USA or UK, you won’t find people of that country saying they want to take side with Binance against their government.
“They will take side with their government immediately. So, what we need to understand is that Binance, in operating in Nigeria, ought to know that they are in Nigeria’s territory.
“So first you must respect the law of the country. Binance can say we have not broken any law of Nigeria, but whether the Federal Government has jurisdiction over binance, to question them, or to sanction them, yes, it does.
“The only thing Binance can do is to get lawyers to say, we have studied your law very well and we did not break them. So, Binance does not have a duty to help Nigerian government implement its policy. The only duty Binance has, like any other entity, is not to break any law in Nigeria. If you break any law in Nigeria, you are really going to be in soup with the government of Nigeria.
“In fact, if you are flying over Nigeria airspace as a pilot, you can commit an offence even though you don’t land in Nigeria. That is why when you are flying nowadays from Europe and you are coming to Nigeria, they don’t fly over Niger.
“They don’t disrespect Niger. Niger has no air system to bring down any aircraft. It has no method of enforcing the law; but people just obey the law because Niger says don’t fly over my airspace, full stop.
“So, it is good to let people know if we have friends abroad who are following us. We should tell them that there are laws in our country and they should not come and break them. So government is right to question them.”
He also advised the government to tackle the corruption and criminality within the government, stressing that most of the crises in the foreign exchange market come from the actors within the government.
