Business
Comptroller General Warns Over Expatriate Quota Abuse
The Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Mrs Rose Uzoma, has cautioned Nigerians to desist from saying many multinational companies are abusing expatriate quota.
Uzoma, who gave the advice on Sunday in Abuja, told newsmen that the relevant agencies were always ensuring that they did not breach their expatriate quota allocations.
She said: “the Nigerian government goes to other parts of the world to woo investors and when they come, they establish businesses or industries that provide jobs for Nigerians.
“That is not to say that we allow them to violate the law,’’ Uzoma stressed.
“Sometimes there is a misconception. We have a population of about 120 million Nigerians and when you have population of less than a million foreigners; would you say we have too many foreigners among us?
“For me I will say we need more foreigners in this country, provided they are the right caliber of foreigners. We need investors because if they come here and establish business or industries, when they are going they will not carry it away.
“And I always say that any business concern that can employ up to 20 Nigerians is quite desirable. All we need to ensure is that they pay their tax and they don’t break our laws.
“So, let not look at any time we see foreigners we say it is abused of expatriates quota. Definitely, there are some people who don’t conform with the laws, but we always remove them when we find them out.
Uzoma also explained that Nigerians must understand rules governing visa applications before demanding retaliatory measures on nationals whose countries would not bend the rules just to issue visas anyhow.
She recalled an interactive session she was engaged recently in London after the British government issued a new visa policy and some Nigerians there were asking that Nigeria should institute retaliatory measure against British nationals planning to visit Nigeria.
“Before I left to the interactive session, I took my time to find out how many British people were living and working in Nigeria. If I remember correctly, there were 586 of them living and working legally in Nigeria.
“And then I asked those Nigerians at the session in London to tell me how many Nigerians they thought were living in the UK. They said they were about three million. I say wait. So if we send away some 400 Britons and they send back three million people, what did they think would happen?’’
Uzoma also said that there were many Nigerian businessmen and women plying their trades all over the world and that it was necessary not to be harsh on foreigners living in Nigeria legitimately.
She said that any foreigner found committing crime would be dealt with, though.
The immigration boss also recalled that the administration of deceased President Umaru Yar’Adua and signed an agreement on the construction of a cement factory in Nigeria with a Chinese company, which would source finance in the international market.
The fund repayment had a deadline and the Chinese company had to mobilise manpower to execute the project in record time.
She then queried if it was improper for the company to move in staff to make the project achievable.
“The question is that at the conclusion of the construction of the factory, the factory will be employing over 2,000 Nigerians. So if this factory is going to take may be one year to build and after that over 2,000 jobs will be created. Is it not desirable? she queried.
“When I enquired, I found that it was in their contract agreement. We have now found that when these contracts are being negotiated, immigration officers should be present so that we can consider some adjoining issues,’’ Uzoma said.
Uzoma said: “Netherlands government has agreed to assist us in updating our basic training school in Kano to bring it up to international level so that it will be comparable to any other training school in Europe.’’
Cornerstone of Financial Services
A survey of more than 1 000 global finance leaders undertaken by digital payment network Ripple shows that 72% of respondents believe they need to offer a digital asset solution to remain competitive.
According to Ripple, leaders from the banking, fintech, corporate and asset management sector have made it clear that the “digital asset revolution is happening now”.
“Digital assets are quickly becoming a cornerstone of financial services, underpinned by progressive regulation, growing interest from Tier-1 banks, a steady consumer shift from banks to fintech providers, and booming stablecoin adoption,” Ripple says.
The survey was conducted in early 2026 and the findings released in March.
Stablecoin Boon or Bane?
Ripple has experienced significant success in the stablecoin sector since launching its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in 2024.
With a market cap of $1.56 billion, it is considered a major regulated player in the market.
No doubt the platform was pleased to learn through its own survey that financial leaders were most bullish about stablecoins.
Roughly three-quarters of respondents believed they could boost cash-flow efficiency and unlock trapped working capital.
Ripple noted that finance leaders were thinking about stablecoins as more than “just a new way to execute payments”; instead, they viewed them as effective tools for treasury management.
In March 2026, Ripple began testing a new trade finance model built around RLUSD in a bid to increase the speed of cross-border payments.
The pilot initiative, developed alongside supply chain finance company Unloq [https://unloq.com], is running on the XRP Ledger inside a testing framework developed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The Asian city-state is one of the platform’s biggest growth markets.
The idea behind the project is to see whether stablecoin-based settlement can streamline trade finance, too often hampered by reliance on intermediaries and slow reconciliation.
The only potential drawback is that if the initiative takes off, the Ripple to USD price could be negatively affected.
Ripple has always championed its native XRP token as a bridge asset, the “middleman” in the process of a financial institution turning dollars in the US into pounds in the UK, for example.
Ripple converts dollars into XRP and then back into pounds.
If RLUSD can do exactly the same thing, questions will be asked about XRP’s relevance.
That is a bridge Ripple will have to cross if it gets to that point.
Tokenisation Partners
Another interesting finding from Ripple’s survey is that most banks and asset managers are seeking tokenisation partners to help execute their strategies.
Some 89% of respondents said digital asset storage and custody were top priority. “Token servicing/lifecycle management also ranks highly for banks at 82%, while asset managers place greater emphasis on primary distribution at 80%,” Ripple found.
The survey also revealed that just more than half of fintechs and financial institutions want an infrastructure provider that can offer a “one-stop-shop solution”. This rose to 71% among corporate financial leaders.
Ripple attributes this to institutions and firms wanting uncomplicated, cohesive systems.
Infrastructure Rules
In its final analysis, Ripple says companies across the board are looking for partners and solutions that are “secure, compliant, battle-tested and that enable growth and execution”.
“The message is clear: infrastructure decisions made today will shape competitive positioning tomorrow.”
No surprise that this is precisely where Ripple is placing much of its focus.
