By Dipo Olowookere
There is palpable fear in the black market segment of the currency market in Lagos as security officials have resumed clampdown of foreign exchange (FX) traders on the streets.
Business Post gathered that some of the forex hawkers were raided at the popular Alade Market in the Ikeja area of Lagos on Tuesday morning.
Information quickly spread to traders in the other parts of the metropolis, including Yaba, Olugbede Model Market, and others.
“The DSS and EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) have started to harass us again because they believe we are behind the recent fall in the Naira,” one of the traders who asked not to be named told this newspaper.
Recall that earlier in the year, security operatives arrested several street FX traders across the country, including Abuja, Kano, Lagos, Port Harcourt, and others.
The Nigerian government also detained officials of a popular cryptocurrency platform, Binance, over allegations that the company was being used to manipulate the Naira at the forex market.
This morning, the chief executive of Binance, Mr Richard Teng, called on the Nigerian government to release the head of its Financial Crime Compliance team, Mr Tigran Gambaryan, who is currently imprisoned in the country.
He accused Nigeria of setting a dangerous precedent after the company’s executives were invited to the African country and then detained as part of a crackdown on cryptocurrency.
In a bid to sanitise the FX space, the government is going after any platform it suspects is being used to manipulate the exchange rate, including the trading of crypto via peer-to-peer (P2P).
The government, through the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is planning to prohibit the use of Naira in all cryptocurrency platforms, just as it did with Binance.
