Nigeria’s net usable external reserves had fallen to about 859 million dollars by the second quarter of 2023, the Central Bank of Nigeria has disclosed, describing it as a low point without precedent in the bank’s records and less than a month’s cover for the country’s import bill.
The figure was given by the Deputy Governor in charge of Corporate Services, Dr Muhammad Sani Abdullahi, at the opening of the 38th Seminar for Finance Correspondents and Business Editors in Abuja on Tuesday. The event was organised by the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria.
According to Abdullahi, gross reserves at the time did not tell the full story. He said that once identified short term obligations were stripped out, net usable reserves stood at 859 million dollars, while outstanding foreign exchange forward claims had climbed above 7 billion dollars, adding to uncertainty for businesses and investors.
He said the bank has since rebuilt that position to about 40 billion dollars in net terms under the current governor, Olayemi Cardoso, who assumed office in September 2023.
Abdullahi tied the recovery to a sequence of reforms. He said the first move came in June 2023, when the bank consolidated its multiple foreign exchange windows into a willing buyer, willing seller framework, lifted restrictions that had kept 43 categories of imports out of the official market, and reviewed the backlog of forward claims. Valid claims, he said, were settled to remove a major source of doubt in the market.
The 859 million dollar figure refers to net usable reserves, a measure that adjusts gross holdings for near term liabilities such as swaps and forward contracts. It is a narrower and more conservative gauge than the headline gross number the bank quotes more often.
That distinction matters when reading the recovery. CBN data cited at the seminar put gross reserves at about 55.6 billion dollars as of 11 September 2026, which the bank said covered 11.3 months of imports at the end of August. The net figure of 40 billion dollars was last stated by Cardoso in July 2026, when gross reserves stood at about 52 billion dollars. The bank has not published a net figure to match the September gross record, a gap some analysts have noted.
Other reserve readings the bank has released over time help place the movement in sequence. The CBN reported net foreign exchange reserves of 3.99 billion dollars at the end of 2023 and 23.11 billion dollars at the close of 2024, before the figure passed 40 billion dollars in 2026. The 2023 seminar figure of 859 million dollars is a second quarter reading, taken before the reforms began, which is why it sits below the year end number.
Abdullahi also pointed to wider macroeconomic shifts. He said headline inflation had eased from a peak of 34.8 per cent in December 2024 to 15.43 per cent in July 2026, and that real gross domestic product grew by 4.43 per cent in the second quarter of 2026. He noted that total foreign exchange inflows reached 10.82 billion dollars in July 2026, with about 68 per cent from autonomous sources, while net foreign portfolio inflows came to 6.31 billion dollars between January and August.
Much of the seminar turned on what banks now do with stronger balance sheets. Abdullahi said 33 banks had raised 4.65 trillion naira under the two year recapitalisation programme, and argued that the exercise should be judged by how far that capital reaches farming, manufacturing, services and infrastructure, not by the amount raised alone.
That charge lands against a recent record of falling credit. CBN figures on the sectoral distribution of bank lending, published earlier in 2026, showed that Deposit Money Banks cut credit to oil and gas, information and communication and six other key sectors by 5.45 trillion naira, or 14.8 per cent, in 2025. Lending to those eight sectors dropped to 31.31 trillion naira from 36.77 trillion naira in 2024.
The steepest fall was in General Services, where credit dropped 25.02 per cent to 4.35 trillion naira. Lending to oil and gas services fell 12.35 per cent, the oil and gas industry segment 8.77 per cent, and information and communication 7.51 per cent.
The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria has attributed the decline to high lending rates, a high Cash Reserve Ratio, the suspension of the bank’s direct development finance interventions and the delay in the proposed one trillion naira Manufacturing Stabilisation Fund.
Whether the recapitalisation reverses that trend remains to be tested. Bank officials at the seminar said they expected exposure to key sectors to rise in 2026 now that the portfolio clean up and capital raising are complete, but the effect will only show in the next rounds of CBN credit data.