Nigeria’s Central Bank Governor Goes After AbokiFX and Founder [videos]

I have called AbokiFX the most powerful economic website in Nigeria, due to its ability  to influence Nigeria’s trade through the asymmetric impact it has on Naira exchange rate. Honestly, I am not a fan. They have made things really hard even here in the US. You set a price on something in Naira and the next day for no apparent economic reason, new rates evolve. 

It turns out that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is paying attention to the factories of the future: digital startups. AbokiFX foreign exchange policy is stronger than whatever CBN has been doing with banks in the last six months. The government was to fight AbokiFX for its market “opinions”!

The Central Bank of Nigeria has accused the Abokifx, a website that collates the black market exchange rates of naira, of carrying out an “illegal activity that undermines the economy”.

The CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, said the publisher of platform, Oniwinde Adedotun, was involved in “illegal forex trading”. […]

“It is completely illegal and unacceptable…Mr Oniwinde is an illegal fx dealer that have inflow and sold tens of millions of fx to several Nigerian companies in contravention of the fx law, he directly benefits from the rates he quotes daily on his website.”

CBN governor contends that AbokiFX could be involved in market manipulations. That would be unfortunate indeed. I hope they get to the root of this matter as quickly as possible as Naira needs help.

Meanwhile, foreign stock trading apps are coming back to life. From Bamboo: “We wanted to update you on the latest developments regarding the recent court order. The Federal High Courts Abuja has issued a varied order to unfreeze our bank accounts so that we can continue operations. As always, we remain completely dedicated to serving you and you can rest assured that your monies and investments are safe with us.” Nigeria’s apex bank has frozen the bank accounts of many foreign stock trading apps on the accusations of forex issues.

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Comment #1: Abokifx.com to my knowledge is just a parallel market exchange rate information aggregating website. We all know what the Nigerian problem regarding autonomous forex markets. Has CBN gone after dealers at Eko Hotel, Federal Palace Hotel, MMIA, Broad Street and Ikeja Airport Hotel yet? Has it attempted to influence the market by selling dollars to buyers at a lower price?

My Response: “Has CBN gone after dealers at Eko Hotel, Federal Palace Hotel, MMIA, Broad Street and Ikeja Airport Hotel yet? – Eko hotel, etc dealers are bounded by geography but AbokitFX is unconstrained and unbounded and that is why it is powerful

Comment #2: Anything that can help put a stop to this madness, I support it 100%. I keep questioning how we wake up each day and naira keeps doing top up, with no economic fundamentals or commodity price movement to point to, yet we accept the manipulation as mere demand and supply issue.

Some people are out to destroy our Naira, and if we don’t fight back, they will ask for our heads too.

Emefiele doesn’t need plenty press conferences on this one, all our national intelligence and security arsenals should be unleashed on these economic bandits.

Ribadu’s EFCC made a lot of people tremble those days, we need something similar and much more sophisticated this time, the era of smiling or appealing to our adversaries is over.

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