Naira Steady At ₦1,368 As External Reserves Cross $52bn
Nigeria’s currency closed the trading week on a remarkably even keel, with the naira quoted at about ₦1,368.22 to the United States dollar at the Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market on Friday, August 7, 2026, a level that caps one of the longest stretches of exchange rate calm the country has seen since the market was unified three years ago.
Figures published by the Central Bank of Nigeria and independent market aggregators put the official rate within a tight band through the week. Historical NFEM records show the dollar closing at roughly ₦1,365.12 on July 31 and ₦1,365.53 on August 1, before the market settled around ₦1,368 in the first week of August. The apex bank’s own daily reference list, which is compiled separately from the NFEM volume weighted average, showed the dollar at ₦1,363.85 on August 5, compared with ₦1,364.83 on Monday, August 3, and ₦1,372.41 at the start of July. On that measure, the naira has firmed by roughly 0.62 per cent since the beginning of last month, a movement so small it barely registers against the violent swings of 2024.
The picture in the informal market is less uniform. Currency dealers quoted the dollar at about ₦1,405 on Friday, placing the parallel premium at roughly ₦37, or a little under 3 per cent above the official window. Independent rate trackers, however, had put Lagos street quotes at about ₦1,410 for buying and ₦1,425 for selling as recently as Thursday morning, which would widen the spread to about ₦62, or 4.5 per cent. The divergence between these quotes underlines a long standing difficulty in Nigerian FX reporting: parallel market prices are not centrally recorded, vary by city, by dealer and by ticket size, and can move several naira within a single trading session.
Whichever figure is used, the gap is a fraction of what it once was. CBN Governor Olayemi Cardoso told an audience in Abuja in the week ending August 5 that the divergence between the official rate and bureau de change quotes had narrowed to under 2 per cent, describing the convergence as evidence that the reform programme is holding. That claim sits at the tighter end of what market data currently shows, and the difference between the official position and street quotes remains a live point of measurement.
The comparison that gives these numbers their weight is historical. The naira traded at about ₦469.50 to the dollar on June 8, 2023, days before the CBN collapsed its multiple exchange rate windows and adopted a willing buyer, willing seller framework on June 14 of that year. The rate moved past ₦750 almost immediately and crossed ₦1,000 before the end of 2023. By February 2024 the currency had touched a then record ₦1,537.96 at the official window, with parallel market quotes near ₦1,650. Later in 2024, official rates approached ₦1,738 while street rates were reported close to ₦1,900. Measured against that trough, the naira has recovered a substantial portion of its lost ground, though it remains far below pre reform levels.
The buffer behind the current stability is the strongest Nigeria has held in nearly two decades. CBN data placed gross external reserves at $52.02 billion on July 20, 2026, the highest since January 2009, when the country held about $52.01 billion. Cardoso told the Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions in July that reserves stood at $52.73 billion as at July 9, up 7.9 per cent from $48.88 billion in January. “Gross external reserves increased by 7.9 percent to $52.73billion as at July 9, 2026, from $48.88billion in January 2026, while net external reserves rose by 900 percent to over $40billion which was $3.99billion in 2023,” he said.
The accumulation has been steady rather than sudden. Reserves climbed from $49.80 billion on June 1 to $51.04 billion by June 18, closed June at $51.45 billion, and added a further $570 million by July 20, overtaking the CBN’s own full year projection of about $51.04 billion with five months of the year still to run.
Crude receipts remain the decisive variable. The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission reported that combined crude and condensate output averaged 1,735,398 barrels per day in June 2026, the fourth consecutive monthly increase. Crude alone came in at 1.56 million barrels per day, equal to 104 per cent of Nigeria’s 1.5 million barrels OPEC quota and the highest crude only figure since April 2020, a 74 month high. Peak combined output that month touched 1.89 million barrels. Bonny terminal led with 318.28 thousand barrels per day, followed by Forcados at 306.36 thousand.
Prices have been rewarding but unsteady. Brent traded at about $87.38 a barrel on August 3, rose to $89.81 on August 4, fell back to $83.72 on August 5, and hovered near $81 on August 6, with market commentary tying the swings to disputes over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The benchmark reached a 52 week intraday high of $120.88 on April 30, 2026, and a low of $58.66 on December 16, 2025, a range that illustrates how quickly Nigeria’s external position can be reset by events far from Abuja.
Inflation has moderated sharply, though not evenly. The National Bureau of Statistics reported headline inflation of 15.91 per cent in June 2026, down from 15.93 per cent in May and well below the 25.29 per cent recorded in June 2025. Month on month, the rate slowed to 1.66 per cent from 1.75 per cent, and the Consumer Price Index rose to 143.0 points from 140.7. Food inflation moved the other way, quickening to 17.52 per cent from 16.96 per cent. Urban inflation stood at 16.08 per cent against 15.48 per cent for rural areas, while state level readings ranged from 42.23 per cent in Niger to 19.74 per cent in Imo.
The Monetary Policy Committee, meeting on July 20 and 21, left the Monetary Policy Rate at 26.5 per cent, the Cash Reserve Ratio at 45 per cent for commercial banks and 16 per cent for merchant banks, and the asymmetric corridor at plus 50 and minus 450 basis points. The rate had been trimmed from 27 per cent earlier in the year after inflation fell to 15.06 per cent in February.
Growth data completes the picture. The NBS put real GDP expansion at 3.89 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, above the 3.13 per cent of Q1 2025 but below the 4.07 per cent recorded in the final quarter of last year. Nominal GDP reached ₦110.79 trillion, with services contributing 57.73 per cent and the oil sector just 3.92 per cent of real output.
Two soft spots stand out in the official record. Diaspora remittances fell to $5.30 billion in the first quarter of 2026 from $5.72 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, a decline the CBN’s balance of payments report linked to leakages pushing transfers outside formal channels. Cardoso has since set a target of about $1 billion in monthly remittance inflows by year end, up from over $600 million currently, telling the 14th Annual BusinessDay CEO Forum in Lagos on July 16: “We are expecting that by the end of the year, we will hit about a billion dollars a month from diaspora remittances.” A CBN circular issued on March 24, 2026, effective May 1, directed international money transfer operators to settle remittances exclusively through naira accounts at authorised dealer banks.
The second is service outflows, which widened to $3.71 billion in Q1 2026 on travel and business spending abroad, even as the current account surplus expanded 255.7 per cent to $4.98 billion, helped by crude exports of $8.11 billion and an 87.5 per cent collapse in refined petroleum imports to $310 million.
For households and small importers, the practical calculation is unchanged: $100 fetches about ₦136,800 through the official window and roughly ₦140,500 to ₦142,500 on the street, depending on the dealer and the day. Businesses with documentation are expected to continue sourcing through banks and the NFEM. What the coming sessions will test is whether reserve accumulation and improved crude output can absorb the next external shock as comfortably as the market currently assumes.