Naira steadies in parallel market, sells at N1,160

The pressure on the foreign exchange (FX) market eased, on Thursday, as naira steadied against the United States dollar in the parallel market.

According to Aboki FX, the naira sells for N1,160 on Wednesday and Thursday respectively.

The black market exchange rate remained the same after moving from N1,145, on Tuesday to N1,160 on Wednesday.

However, speaking to journalists, a Chartered accountant and a financial & risk expert, Olabode Afolayan, disclosed that to sustain the momentum, the citizens must cut their appetite for foreign made goods and also De-dollarise the economy.

According to him, importation is putting so much pressure on the naira saying, there should be a change of mindset by Nigerians.

“We need to have a change of mindset and be more patriotic. We need to buy more of home made items than importation. Though, the question why people not buying Nigerian made things is due to quality but, we need to do what Chinese did by going local.

“We need to start producing our own televisions, our engineering students in the universities should be able to get a build local technology for this, we need to start manufacturing en masse,” he advised.

Afolayan further stated that the government should encourage export, saying the country export must be more importation.

He also urged government to clampdown on Nigerians hoarding the dollars as they are more powerful as the government is doing more to maintain momentum against the dollar.

“We need not to sabotage the effort of the govt and the government should talk to those hoarding the dollar because they are the Big Boys of Nigeria and not ordinary Nigerians.

When they hoard, government should clampdown on them because government is doing everything to make naira appreciate by clearing the forex backlogs and clearing trapped funds of foreign airlines. I learnt the government clear some of this outstanding hence the naira appreciated.

Also, government should look inward, they should ensure export is more than import and with that, the naira will sustain it’s momentum against the dollar, ” Afolayan stated.