A university don, Prof. James Ihejeme has advised the Federal Government to consider the adoption of cryptocurrency for a sustainable development.
Ihejeme gave the advice while delivering the 61st Inaugural Lecture at Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike(MOUAU), Abia.
Ihejeme, who is of the Department of Banking and Finance, spoke on the theme: “Cryptocurrency Investment in Nigeria: Stabilising Future of Money oney for Sustainable Development.”
The lecturer, recognised as the first Professor of Cryptocurrency in Africa, said that cryptocurrency would solve Nigeria’s economic problems of inflation, exchange rate and others.
Ihejeme disclosed that in his research he used an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to test the sustainability of cryptocurrency and discovered that it can work.
According to him cryptocurrency is not controlled by any country or central bank but by blockchain technology – a network of computers distributed all over the world.
He said: “The Federal Government should adopt it entirely and totally but should go into effective regulatory framework so that if anybody abuses the system the law will catch up with the person.
“It is very easy to catch a fraudster trying to use it because through the blockchain technology it is traceable.
“Cryptocurrency is a technical improvement to paper currency and if Nigeria continues to ban it, the country will lose in the long run.
“While cryptocurrency holds promise, much remains unclear.We need context -specific research, especially in Nigeria to understand its real impact.”
In a remark, the Vice-Chancellor of MOUAU, Prof. Maduebibisi Iwe described Ihejeme as an erudite scholar, while commending him for making the concept clearer to the people.
“We are trying to make sure that we represent ourselves as a modern university and as an institution that feels the pulse of the people,” he said .(NAN)
