Best Forex Brokers in Nigeria of 2023

The Nigerian financial market is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The role of the SEC has been primarily focused on the local stock exchange and the assets traded in it, and not much attention has been paid to the regulation of other derivative products. 

With regards to the regulation of the forex market in Nigeria, the attitude of the SEC has been one of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”. The agency knows that Nigerians are trading forex with foreign brokers. They know that at least four brands have sited offices in Nigeria and are actively onboarding clients. Yet, the organization has no regulations in place and hardly even comments about the market, except for a few general warnings that ask investors to act responsibly when engaging in speculative investing, without addressing the forex market in particular. This behaviour is on contrary to the South African financial regulator FSCA, which is very active regarding forex regulations.

In late 2019, there were attempts to initiate a discussion on the regulation of the forex and cryptocurrency markets in Nigeria, but these quickly lost steam when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, diverting the agency’s attention to other matters.

So we have a situation where the forex market in Nigeria is unregulated. The local branches of the international brands that have an office in the country are not regulated nor licensed, but they are operating legally because there are no laws prohibiting them from doing so.
 

The best forex brokers in Nigeria are those brands whose parent companies are found in Cyprus, and which have offices in Lagos or Abuja, Nigeria. These are the only two cities that have a local presence of some CySEC-regulated forex brands in Nigeria. However, there is no local regulation, so there is no central register where you can visit to check the status of any brand that says it is a forex broker in Nigeria. However, locally based traders can always conduct spot checks to see if the brands still do business in the country or not. 

A search of various Nigerian forex brokers indicates that bonuses are still given freely by forex brokers in Nigeria. These bonuses are mostly deposit bonuses, which provide extra capital for trading that ranges from 30% of the deposit amount to 100% of the deposit amount. Some of these forex brokers in Nigeria also conduct period giveaways, where users can get access to shopping vouchers and other gift items. 

There are no leverage restrictions when it comes to forex trading in Nigeria. Nigerian forex trades can, therefore, easily access leverage of up to 1:500 on several local brokerage platforms. What does this translate into monetary terms?

Setting up a mini-lot position on the EURUSD requires $10,000 capital on the forex platform of a forex broker in Nigeria. A leverage size of 1:500 allows the trader to get 20-fold extra capital to setup a trade. This means that the trader would only need $20 setup a mini-lot trade. Using the conversion factor from a Naira-denominated forex account, this equates to a margin requirement of N8,000. In fact, the trader would be trading as if he or she had access to capital of N4,000,000!