Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian Naira weakened against the US Dollar in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) on Thursday, April 25 as it fell by 0.1 per cent.
During the trading session, the value of the Naira closed at N1,309.88/$1 compared with the preceding day’s closing value of N1,308.52/$1.
It was the fifth straight session that the Naira has dropped value following a stronger-than-expected recovery for the local currency in the past weeks.
The loss yesterday happened despite an improvement in the supply of FX to the spot market, as the turnover rose by 61.0 per cent or $120.54 million to $318.08 million from $197.54 million.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had sustained ongoing reforms which were yielding results with steady appreciation of the Naira until the local currency started experiencing a recent decline.
Supporting the CBN’s efforts, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) froze over 300 accounts linked to illicit forex trading to ensure the safety of the foreign exchange market.
EFCC Chairman, Mr Ola Olukoyede, announced the freezing of the accounts on Tuesday, during an interactive meeting with media executives in Abuja, saying the anti-graft agency discovered another scheme other than the crypto trading platform, Binance, and its system.
The EFCC boss noted that there were people within the system who were carrying out activities worse than Binance using Peer-to-Peer (P2P) platforms.
Also, the Naira witnessed further drops against the Pound Sterling and the Euro on Thursday.
Against the British curreny, it lost N64.95 to sell at N1,655.20/£1 versus N1,590.25/£1 and against the Euro, it depreciated by N55.81 to sell at N1,423.04/€1 versus N1,367.23/€1.
In the black market, the domestic currency suffered a N120 loss against the United States Dollar yesterday to trade at N1,420/$1 compared with the midweek session’s N1,300/$1.
As for the digital currency market, there were some recoveries across the benchmarked tokens tracked by Business Post, with Litecoin (LTC) gaining 1.4 per cent to $83.88, as Binance Coin (BNB) rose by 1.2 per cent to $614.13.
Further, Ethereum (ETH) appreciated by 1.1 per cent to $3,157.96, Dogecoin (DOGE) grew by 0.9 per cent to $0.1518, Bitcoin (BTC) expanded by 0.8 per cent to $64,520.28, and Ripple (XRP) increased by 0.1 per cent to $0.5248.
Conversely, Solana (SOL) recorded a 1.2 per cent slump to trade at $145.07, and Cardano (ADA) depreciated by 0.3 per cent to $0.4712, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and the US Dollar Coin (USDC) closed flat at $1.00 each.
