The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) may have finally bowed to immense pressure from various quarters to devalue the Naira.
Few days ago, there were speculations that the central bank would devalue the local currency, following crash in the prices of crude oil at the global market and steep decline in the foreign reserves.
This created panic at the currency market and caused the Naira/Dollar exchange rate to shoot as high as N400/$1 at the black market. The value only retreated to N375/$1 at the parallel market on Thursday after the CBN had maintained that it was not going to carry out exchange rate realignment.
Yesterday, the Presidential Economic Advisory Council held a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari and he was bluntly told that the current economic situation in the global could force Nigeria to devalue the local currency.
However, the CBN confirming the development in a memo on Friday evening directed that bureaux de change (BDC) operators in the country must not sell dollars higher than N380 to end users.
This memo was signed by O.S. Nnaji, director of the apex bank’s trade and exchange department.
The memo was issued to banks and bureau de change operators.
