The naira opened weaker this morning, slipping in both the official and parallel markets and adding to a quiet, week-long slide that the Central Bank has so far refused to publicly acknowledge.
At the Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market window, the dollar traded at ₦1,373.5, up from ₦1,372 in Monday’s session. On the streets, the rate moved to about ₦1,395 to the dollar, compared to roughly ₦1,390 at Friday’s close.
The pressure is coming from the same places it always does. Importers are stockpiling forex ahead of the June deadline for the CBN’s new cyber-security baseline, which has eaten into banks’ operational dollar inventories. Manufacturers, particularly in pharma and FMCG, are clearing backlogs of raw-material orders. And the global oil price, which had been creeping toward $110 a barrel last week on Iran war fears, slipped overnight after President Trump postponed a planned strike, taking the wind out of Nigeria’s expected dollar inflows.
The CBN intervened modestly in the last week, but traders say the volumes have been small. The bigger question is fiscal. Nearly ₦43 trillion has been added to Nigeria’s debt stock through pure exchange-rate revaluation, and every kobo the naira slides makes the dollar-denominated portion of that debt more expensive to service.
For ordinary Nigerians, the message is the familiar one. Rent, school fees, and even local food prices are still being quietly indexed to the parallel-market rate.
