The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has strongly denied claims that it had allocated US1.259 billion as awards to leading players in oil industry in the importation of refined fuel products and related comities.
Defining the reports as all false and misleading, the central bank explained that the mentioned amount of US 1.259 billion, which is described in the report on Sectoral Utilization of Foreign Exchange query issued in the Q1 2025 should not be referred to disbursements made by the CBN.
In a statement made by the spokesperson of the bank it was quoted that it is only an amount that denotes the aggregate foreign exchange transactions that are made by those involved in the Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market (NFEM) in all sectors among them being the oil and gas sectors operating within the willing buyer, willing seller model.
Sidi Ali emphasized the fact that, after the exchange rates have been unified in 2023, the NFEM has operated as a market-driven scheme, where the market players buy and supply the foreign exchange without depending on CBN allocations.
She explained that it had not been undertaken that the bank was selling foreign exchange particularly to import refined petroleum or any other commodity.
The information used in the report is purely the aggregate consumption of foreign exchange by the authorized dealers as well as the end users that ventured into the market by themselves to acquire foreign exchange in accordance to the current regulations, she expounded.
The statistics presented, she pointed, are indicators of legitimate market change and not of CBN intervention in the oil market, and that the CBN is committed to an open, market-based foreign exchange system that promotes efficient market discovery of prices, economic stability and a sense of confidence.
