CBN Launches Payments System Vision 2028 to Achieve 95% Financial Inclusion as NUPRC Oil Workers Strike Shuts Regulatory Offices Nationwide Before Midnight Resolution

Tuesday, June 2, 2026 | Policy & Economy

June 2, 2026 delivers a defining day for Nigeria’s economic reform story: the CBN unveils its most ambitious digital finance roadmap yet, while oil sector labour unrest tests the government’s capacity to protect the regulatory architecture that underpins it.

Nigeria’s economic reform agenda confronted both its highest ambitions and its most immediate vulnerabilities on the same day, Tuesday, June 2, 2026. The Central Bank of Nigeria unveiled the Nigeria Payments System Vision 2028, a landmark strategic roadmap targeting 95 percent financial inclusion and positioning Nigeria as Africa’s leading digital payments hub. Within hours, oil sector workers under PENGASSAN shut down every office of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission nationwide in an indefinite industrial action over training and welfare disputes, before a midnight resolution returned all operations to normal. The contrast between visionary policy and ground-level institutional friction captures the precise tension running through Nigeria’s reform programme in its third year.

CBN Governor Olayemi Cardoso launched PSV 2028 at a formal ceremony in Abuja, describing the framework as ‘a blueprint for how Nigerians will transact, save, invest, and participate in an increasingly digital economy.’ The roadmap aims to expand financial inclusion to 95 percent of the adult population, deepen digital payments, and position Nigeria as Africa’s leading payments hub. The CBN calculates that achieving this target requires bringing approximately 15 million additional Nigerians into the formal financial system over the next two years. PSV 2028 also aims to improve interoperability across domestic and cross-border payment systems, positioning Nigeria more strongly within the African Continental Free Trade Area and global digital commerce networks.

CBN Director of Payment System Policy, Musa Jimoh, traced Nigeria’s financial sector transformation from 2007, when the country was largely cash-based with limited access to electronic payment channels and banking services. He noted that high service costs, limited banking access, and stringent account-opening requirements had historically hindered financial inclusion. The PSV 2028 represents the third generation of CBN payment system policy, building on the achievements of previous roadmaps that helped Nigeria develop one of Africa’s most advanced digital payments markets. Cardoso was uncompromising about implementation discipline, warning: ‘The success of PSV 2028 will not be judged by the quality of this document, but by execution.’

Read More: How Tinubu’s Oil Revenue Executive Order and Nigeria’s Upstream Investment Surge Are Rewriting the Rules of Africa’s Most Complex Energy Economy

Simultaneously, PENGASSAN workers shut down all NUPRC offices in a dispute over staff training programmes, particularly the commission’s position that capacity-building initiatives including Factory Acceptance Tests for Positive Displacement meters should be conducted locally rather than through overseas programmes. Management had insisted on local training as a cost-saving measure and a strategy to build in-country technical capacity. The industrial action paralysed all administrative and regulatory activities at the NUPRC’s Abuja headquarters and all field offices nationwide, raising immediate concerns about the 2026 oil bloc licensing round expected to conclude on July 12. Analysts at the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise warned that prolonged action would have consequences disproportionate to the training dispute triggering it.

The strike, which lasted 12 hours, was called off on the night of June 1 after successful negotiations between NUPRC top management and the two in-house unions, PENGASSAN and NUPENG. The commission confirmed that regulatory activities in oil and gas production facilities remained unaffected throughout the dispute, and that only administrative functions were disrupted. United Bank for Africa reinforced the digital economy narrative the same day, using its Africa Day 2026 celebrations across 20 African countries to spotlight its cross-border banking strategy and continental integration agenda, aligning precisely with the CBN’s PSV 2028 architecture of regional payment interoperability.

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