Nigeria's naira hit a record low of 1,100 per dollar on the black market on Wednesday, online platform abokiFX showed, a day after the currency hit a new low on the official market due to persistent dollar shortages.
The naira has been in freefall on the unofficial market, where it trades freely, which worsened after currency restrictions were lifted on the official market.
source Dollar has been a free fall in the unofficial market but that's not all, it's the same even in the official market place. The difference is the official market is protected under the watch of central bank, it's the Import and export(I and I windows) market you can officially buy USD but there is challenge of getting it quickly due to protocols and rules, so the only place to get it faster is unofficial (parallel) market where the price is slightly higher than the I and E windows.
Naira and dollar relationship has been finance by the fiscal and monetary policy where the government and the central banks have to intervene to fix an official price for the dollar to a naira which has been the traditional thing over the years but there is a new government in town that don't want to do that anymore because the government is the one funding the Forex and many loans have been taken over the years just to protect dollar to naira price. They decide to put an end to it and now allow everyone to go source their dollar by themselves, it's no longer the responsibility of the government to subsidies the price of dollar to a naira.
If they have allowed naira and dollar to be traded by the forces of demand and supply, it will probably have been or more than these price but the past government didn't allow that to happen and it's now that we are feeling the negative impact. I love how the government has stopped funding of dollars because it has allow the country to be in debts, even in US, they don't subsidized dollar to other currencies, they allow demand and supply to do his thing.
Naira has always been weaker to dollar, if really they have allowed the I and E windows all this while, problems like insecurities, low production would have been seen even from our currency but the government has been protecting it.
If the current government are serious about devaluing naira, they need to equally increase security accross the north, they need to fix the roads in all the 36 states in the country so that transportation of foods can be easy, they need to support local production, encourage export so that the country will also earn more dollars. It is going to be an advantage if the country fix exportation to get more dollars and reduce importation to increase the value of their own currency.