More Worries as Naira’s Street Value Crumbles to N1220/$1

By Dipo Olowookere

The free-fall of the Naira against the Dollar in the parallel market segment of the foreign exchange (FX) market continued on Monday morning.

Business Post reports that in the unofficial market window, the Nigerian Naira crumbled against the greenback in the black market today by N67 or 5.81 per cent to quote at N1,220/$1 compared with last Friday’s value of N1,153/$1.

One of the FX traders on the streets of Lagos, identified as Alhaji Isa, informed this newspaper that with the way things are going, the street value of the country’s legal tender could go as low as N1,500 before December 2023.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) under the leadership of Mr Yemi Cardoso is yet to impress observers as to how he intends to save the Naira from total collapse.

A few weeks ago, in an effort to salvage the situation, he announced the lifting of the forex embargo earlier placed on the importation of 43 items, which included cement, rice, sugar, milk and others.

In 2015, under the leadership of Mr Godwin Emefiele, who was removed from office in June 2023, the apex bank restricted importers of these items from accessing FX from the official window.

This action, along with the closure of borders about four years later, pushed the prices of food items and others higher. This was because importers had to approach the black market to purchase Dollars to bring them into the country, raising their prices higher for consumers.

Mr Cardoso, who thought removing the embargo would solve the problem, has been proven wrong as the value of the local currency has not improved.

In a brief chat with Business Post on Monday morning, Alhaji Isa said, “The problem is that we do not have forex to sell to customers. If the CBN can improve the inflow of FX, the Naira will gain strength.

“You see, we are also very careful not to keep the Dollars with us because we do not know what might happen next. We quickly sell off what we have so as not to regret keeping them for too long.”

At the time of filing this report, the Naira was selling at N1,213/$1 in the peer-to-peer (P2P) segment of the market, in contrast to last Friday’s rate of N1,064/$1, showing that it depleted against the American currency by N149 or 14.00 per cent.