By Henri Boyo
In
December 2016, the finance minister Mrs. Kemi Adeosun responded as follows in a
text message to Reuters reporters that, “The
CBN is working on the elimination of arbitrage.” Furthermore, Isaac Okorafor, CBN’s
spokesperson, confirmed in a press statement that the bank was working towards “ensuring there is no black
market,” see Punch 21/12/16.
In
January, 2017, the Vice President Yemi Osibanjo speaking at the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland also noted that “The CBN needs to close
the gap between the official and black market exchange rates for the naira
“very soon”, see Punch 18/01/2017.
Furthermore,
the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu was also reported in Punch Newspaper edition of 19/01/17 to have
noted that: “We are worried
with the huge gap between the parallel and the official market; and as it has
been said by the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the Central Bank of
Nigeria needs to do something about it, because it is one thing that is
breeding corruption …. We must find a way of bridging that gap and also
stabilize the exchange rate so that investors can do their own forecast in
terms of their investments. We believe that something needs to be done in the
area of the exchange rate.”
The
above title was first published in September 2005 and the following is a
summary of that article:
“The appropriate pricing of the naira,
has been a subject of debate in the last 25 years. During this period,
the value has descended from more than parity to its current rate of about
N129=$1. We recall that in those days of glory, the general standard of
living was well above the poverty level; indeed, Nigeria
