By Sola Adebawo

Nigeria has spent decades competing for investment through familiar levers of economic policy. Tax incentives. Market reforms. Infrastructure spending. Regulatory changes.

Those fundamentals remain important.

But in the digital economy, another source of competitive advantage is quietly emerging. It is not built with concrete, fibre-optic cables or data centres. It is built through institutions that can work together.

That is why President Bola Tinubu’s Presidential Executive Order on Virtual Assets Coordination, 2026 deserves attention beyond the headlines. Much of the public discussion has centred on cryptocurrency, Bitcoin and the creation of a Central Bank-led Virtual Asset Council. Those are important developments.

Yet they are not, in my view, the most important story.

The Executive Order is better understood as an attempt to answer a much larger question: How should governments organise themselves when technology evolves faster than the institutions responsible for governing it? Whether the initiative succeeds remains to be seen. But the question it seeks to address is one that every modern economy is increasingly confronting.

Institutions are becoming economic infrastructure

When economists discuss infrastructure, they usually think of roads, ports, airports, power stations and broadband networks.

These remain indispensable.

But another form of infrastructure has become equally important.

Institutional infrastructure.

These are the governance arrangements that enable markets to function with confidence. They define responsibilities, coordinate decision-making, reduce uncertainty and establish the predictability upon which investment depends.

A country may have world-class digital connectivity, abundant entrepreneurial talent and access to capital. Yet if investors cannot determine which regulator has jurisdiction, agencies issue conflicting directives or compliance becomes unpredictable, innovation slows and capital looks elsewhere.

Technology creates opportunity.

Institutions determine whether societies capture it.

The problem is no longer regulation. It is fragmentation.

Public debate often assumes that regulation is the enemy of innovation.

That is an oversimplification.

Most serious businesses are not seeking the absence of regulation. They are seeking clarity.

The entrepreneur deciding whether to establish a company in Lagos, Dubai, Singapore or London is not asking only about tax rates or market size.

They are asking different questions.

Who regulates this activity?

Which licence is required?

How long will approvals take?

If regulations change, will they change transparently and predictably?

Markets adapt remarkably well to clear rules.

They struggle with fragmented ones.

That is why the most consequential feature of Nigeria’s new Executive Order may not be the establishment of another government body. According to the Presidency, its primary purpose is to improve coordination among existing institutions while preserving their respective statutory mandates.

Whether that coordination ultimately delivers better outcomes is another matter.

But the diagnosis appears sound.

This extends far beyond cryptocurrency

Bitcoin dominates public attention because it is familiar.

Yet digital assets today encompass far more than cryptocurrencies. They increasingly intersect with payments, securities, taxation, financial markets, digital identity, trade documentation and cross-border commerce.

The traditional boundaries between these sectors are becoming less distinct.

The same convergence is occurring across artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and data governance.

Technology is integrating.

Government institutions, however, often remain organised in separate bureaucratic silos.

That mismatch is becoming one of the defining governance challenges of the digital age.

Nigeria is confronting that reality.

So are governments across the world.

The countries that will lead

History offers an important lesson.

The countries that benefited most from previous industrial revolutions were not always those that invented the breakthrough technologies.

More often, they were the countries that built institutions capable of supporting those technologies at scale.

The digital economy is unlikely to be different.

Tomorrow’s competitive advantage will increasingly belong to countries whose regulatory institutions can work together with speed, consistency and credibility.

Institutional coordination is therefore more than administrative reform.

It is becoming an economic strategy.

Investors do not invest only in markets.

They invest in the quality of governance that surrounds those markets.

A necessary note of caution

None of this should be interpreted as declaring success.

Executive Orders express intent.

Institutions produce outcomes.

The effectiveness of Nigeria’s new framework will ultimately depend on implementation.

Will agencies genuinely collaborate?

Will regulatory decisions become faster and more predictable?

Will legitimate innovators experience greater clarity without compromising financial integrity, consumer protection or national security?

These questions remain unanswered.

And they should remain unanswered until experience provides credible evidence.

Good policy analysis distinguishes between announced ambition and demonstrated performance.

The larger story

Perhaps that is why this conversation should not begin and end with cryptocurrency.

The Executive Order matters.

But it matters less because it concerns virtual assets than because it reflects a broader evolution in public administration.

For generations, governments competed by building physical infrastructure.

Today, they must also compete by building institutional infrastructure.

Roads connect cities.

Ports connect markets.

Digital networks connect people.

Institutional coordination connects government itself.

That may prove to be one of the defining competitive advantages of the twenty-first century.

Nigeria’s new Executive Order should therefore be judged not simply by the councils it establishes or the regulations that follow.

It should be judged by whether it helps create a regulatory environment that is more coherent, more predictable and more capable of supporting innovation while safeguarding the public interest.

Because in the end, technology does not determine national prosperity on its own.

Technology creates possibilities.

Institutions determine whether those possibilities become lasting economic progress.

About author: Sola Adebawo is an energy industry executive and strategic advisor with nearly three decades of experience across Africa’s oil and gas sector. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Hyphen Partners Limited, a specialist advisory firm focused on policy and regulatory intelligence, market entry, stakeholder strategy, and executive positioning in complex and highly regulated industries. His writing explores reform, political economy, leadership, the relationship between institutions and public life as well as the institutional forces shaping Africa’s development. He is an author, scholar and ordained minister.