So tight is the supply of dollars in Nigeria these days that even big international airlines are struggling to repatriate revenue from ticket sales. Emirates announced it would suspend flights to and from Nigeria from September, only resuming flights to Lagos when the central bank released $265mn of the estimated $464mn that airlines say it was sitting on.
Currency traders and investors say Nigeria’s chronic dollar shortage, a constant complaint of businesses operating in the country, has recently tipped into crisis. The naira, which trades officially at N421 to the dollar, has fallen to N700 on the parallel market, with talk that it could weaken further.
“It’s really a perfect storm,” said Iyin Aboyeji, a fintech entrepreneur in Lagos. “No one could have foreseen it: low oil production and high dollar demand.”