Nearly a year after President Bola Tinubu approved Nigeria’s National Carbon Market Framework, the country has moved to its next implementation stage: establishing the specific criteria that will determine which carbon projects the government will approve to operate within it.
The National Council on Climate Change (NCCC) held a National Stakeholder Review and Validation Workshop on the draft Host Country Approval Criteria for Nigeria’s Carbon Market Operations in Abuja on Tuesday. Omotenioye Majekodunmi, Director-General of the NCCC, told the workshop that Nigeria had already secured approval for the carbon market framework itself. The task now facing stakeholders, she said, is establishing approval criteria that protect Nigeria’s national interests while giving credible investors and project developers the certainty they need.
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Simon Uchenna Ortuanya, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, represented by Nnaemeka Chukwuone, Professor at the university, said the approval criteria would provide guidance on the eligibility, screening and assessment of carbon market projects, describing their development as guided by sound research.
The framework this builds on
The workshop marks a further step in a process that began nearly a year earlier. Tinubu approved the National Carbon Market Framework in late October 2025, ahead of Nigeria’s participation in COP30 in Belém, Brazil, alongside operationalising the country’s Climate Change Fund and restoring the NCCC to the national budget line. Tinubu, represented at the time by Kashim Shettima, Vice President, said the approvals were designed to position Nigeria to leverage opportunities in the global carbon market. Wale Edun, then Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, said Nigeria needed to secure a strong position within the carbon framework, and committed his ministry’s economic department to coordinating a quarterly Climate Finance Tracking Dashboard.
A further approval came in January 2026, when Tinubu signed off on the framework’s full implementation and operationalisation. Majekodunmi said at the time that Nigeria would prioritise participation in the voluntary carbon market and international trading, while gradually introducing a domestic emissions trading system and carbon tax. That stage of the framework included plans for a national carbon registry, with oversight resting with the NCCC, chaired by the President, supported by a dedicated carbon-market office responsible for project approvals, registries, authorisations and market supervision.
What’s at stake financially
The government has projected the framework could unlock between $2.5 billion and $3 billion annually in carbon finance over the next decade, positioning carbon trading as a significant driver of non-oil revenue. The framework spans forestry, energy and agriculture, and aligns Nigeria’s carbon market activities with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, the provision governing international cooperation on emissions trading and carbon credits between countries.
Why the approval criteria stage matters
The host country approval criteria now under review are a specific, practical mechanism. They determine which carbon offset or reduction projects Nigeria’s government will formally authorise to sell credits internationally under the framework. Getting this stage right matters because it is designed to prevent exactly the problems that have undermined voluntary carbon markets elsewhere: projects of questionable integrity, double-counting of credits, and weak enforcement that erodes investor confidence. Analysis of Nigeria’s carbon market framework has noted that a central goal is eliminating the historical fragmentation of carbon projects that previously operated without unified national oversight.
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Whether Nigeria’s approval criteria, once finalised, succeed in attracting the investment the framework projects, while avoiding the credibility problems that have affected carbon markets elsewhere, will likely determine how much of that projected $2.5–3 billion actually materialises.
