By Dipo Olowookere
The free-fall of the Naira against the US Dollar in the parallel market continued on Wednesday morning, according to data collated by Business Post.
This newspaper gathered from traders of foreign exchange (FX) on the streets of Lagos that the Naira was exchanged at N1,510 to a Dollar.
One of the forex traders, who spoke with Business Post, Alhaji Isa, said more people are coming to convert their local currency to the US currency, causing sellers to demand more Naira to part with their Dollars, which are short in supply.
“You will not blame us for this; this is purely what you people call Economics; demand and supply.
“We have not been able to get more forex lately and because of the official market rate yesterday, it was expected that the black market rate would rise; you should not be surprised at all,” he told this newspaper.
On Tuesday, the Naira closed in the black market at N1,490/$1 after losing N40 of its previous day’s value of N1,450/$1.
In the official market, which is the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM), the local currency depreciated against its American counterpart yesterday by 9.9 per cent or N133.95 to settle at N1,482.57/$1 compared with the preceding day’s N1,346/$1.
The Nigerian currency has been struggling for life in the past few months and efforts by the administration of President Bola Tinubu to help have been futile.
When he assumed office, he stopped payment of subsidy of premium motor spirit (PMS) and liberalised the exchange rate, but these policies have not yielded any meaningful results.
Pressure is currently mounting on his government to salvage the situation before things get out of hand, especially because of the effects of the weakening of the Naira in the FX market, as the prices of goods and services keep going up like they are on steroids.
