The Presidency has warned FX speculators amid ongoing exchange rate fluctuations.
Newsone Nigeria reports that Bayo Onanuga, the Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to Nigeria’s President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has urged speculators to quickly dump their dollars to avoid “tears”.
This online news platform understands that the Presidential aide was reacting to the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, disclosure that it had cleared the $7 billion foreign exchange backlog inherited by Governor Yemi Cardoso.
CBN’s Acting Director of Corporate Communications, Mrs Hakama Sidi Ali, in a statement on Wednesday, March 20, 2024, confirmed the settlement of all valid FX backlog claims.
Ali said the apex bank employed Deloitte Consulting, an independent auditing firm, to meticulously assess the transactions, ensuring that only legitimate claims were honoured.
“Any invalid transactions were referred to the relevant authorities for further investigation,” she stated.
The CBN’s commitment to tackling the FX backlog appears to be paying off, with the external reserves seeing a significant rise, reaching $34.11 billion as of March 7, 2024, the highest level in eight months
Reacting to the development, Onanuga posted on the micro-blogging site, X formerly known as Twitter, “With backlog FX settled, Naira is set to appreciate further, faster. Currency speculators should quickly dump their stock of dollars to avoid sorrows and tears.”