Foreign exchange (forex) speculators have lost over N100 million in the last three days after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) injected fresh dollars into the interbank market.
Many of them panicked as news about the CBN’s intervention hit the market. This was in continuation of its strategy to strengthen the value of the naira.
According a source in the apex the bank, there is a planned release of an additional $350million bringing the total to $570 million in this week alone to further crash the value of the dollar.
Already, there are heightened fears among traders and other market participants who are yet to recover from the losses of the last two weeks owing to sharp and sudden appreciation of the Naira.
CBN’s Acting Director, Corporate Communication, Isaac Okorafor, confirmed this development, reiterated that with improving reserve levels, the Bank was determined to continuously make forex available to all genuine customers through their banks, advising those hoarding the greenback to reduce their losses by selling their dollar stock.
Market watchers said there was the likelihood of a liquidity glut as banks were beginning to send out salespeople to scout for customers to buy off their dollars to avoid losses arising from the expected further appreciation of the naira.
The CBN has in the last one week supplied a total of $570 million to the market made up of $80 million for Personal Travel Allowances, medical fees and school fees, $100 million in wholesale forwards, while another $350 million was injected into the interbank market at the weekend.
Tag: speculators
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Speculators lose N100m as CBN pumps dollars into interbank
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Speculators push naira to N460/$ in black market
The naira suffered a major setback against the dollar, exchanging at N460 to dollar as currency speculators chased higher margins.
The local currency lost 1.76 per cent against the dollar on the parallel market, down from N452 at the close of trading on Tuesday, even as dollar supplies dry up.
Though the naira closed at N305.50 to the dollar on the official interbank market against 305 a dollar, the previous day, traders said dollar liquidity remains a major challenge in the market. “Trading has continue to be thin on the interbank market as the dollar shortage persists while demand for the greenback remains strong,” one dealer said.
Explaining why the naira is losing strength against the dollar, President, Association of Bureau De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON) Aminu Gwdabe said: “One major factor to naira decline is the drop in crude oil prices in the international market, and the dwindling foreign reserves. In Nigeria, we have not been able to build strong buffers, so that when we witness this type of thing, like other countries, we would be protected.
“For instance, the United Arab Emirates has over $400 billion in their reserves, and that is a very big buffer for them as it protects their local currency at any given time. Don’t forget that without the buffers, there is no way one can defend the local currency.”
He said the naira outside the banking system is even bigger than the one inside the banking system. With that, it is difficult for the regulator to control the money outside the system, which should be mopped up to enhance the value of the naira.
Speaking further, he said the gap between the official and black market rates was very worrisome.
“As a Nigeria, anytime I see the gap increasing, I become concerned and say that this gap has to be reduced. I told you before, the reasons that create this gap and also compromise. Nigeria is an economy where you see compromise. Speculators are always standing to ensure that the naira does not see the light of the day. Speculators are the biggest challenge facing the naira,” he said.
Continuing, he said: “Don’t forget that speculation is on its own, a business. Once the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) follows one road, they will find way to frustrate the policy and ensure that their business is ongoing. But with increased transparency, liquidity, the activities of speculators will be reduced and volume of parallel market operators will also be reduced. People are now talking about how do earn dollar from how do we spend dollar. We should move from the era of saying allocation to think of how to bring in the dollars.”
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Bill against land speculators passes second reading in Ogun Assembly
•Coker Farm settlers lament ordeal
Hundreds of farmer-settlers at the over 50-year-old Coker Farm Settlement (CFS) in Ifo, Ogun State and others will soon enjoy peace as a Bill against land speculators is enjoying prompt attention in the Ogun State House of Assembly (OGHA).
The bill, which has passed through first and second readings, is at the Committee Stage.
Titled: “A Bill for A Law To Prohibit Forcible Entry and Occupation of a Landed Properties, Violent and Fraudulent Conducts in a Relation To Landed Properties In Ogun State And for Connected Purposes”. It was proposed by Kunle Oluomo (Ifo1).
Information about the bill came to light yesterday following the protest by farmers at the CFS over their harrowing experiences in the hands of “land grabbers” and “sand diggers”.
For years, farmers at the CFS established by the first Premier of Old Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, said they have been groaning under what they called routine destruction of their crops and farmlands by “land grabbers” and “sand diggers”.
The farmers claimed they have lost millions of naira worth of cash crops in addition to funds invested in farming.
Narrating their ordeals to reporters at a meeting attended by hundreds of the farmers, their wives and children, the CFS’ Secretary, Adediran Babatunde, called on the government “to save this surviving legacy of their forefathers from total destruction”.
Adediran said the 720 acres at Adegbite and Asani areas of Ifo, which was allocated to 124 farmers, began to witness encroachment during the former Governor Gbenga Daniel administration. He added that the situation got to a peak in 2012 without a respite.
But assuring the farmers, OGHA’s Deputy Speaker, Kunle Oluomo, said the bill when passed will tackle the problems of farmers at the CFS and other land matters.
Oluomo, who spoke yesterday with The Nation, said the bill will stop further encroachment, empower the government to demolish illegal structures interfering with the vision of the settlement and compelled others to ratify their properties.
According to the lawmaker, the bill, when passed into law, would also make it an offence for any person to act or purport to act on behalf of any party to a real property transaction or engage in forceful takeover or sale of a landed property.
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Police parade suspected land speculators
The Ogun State Police Command at the weekend paraded some suspected land speculators, popularly called Omo Onile.
The suspects – Taofeeq Bankole and his alleged accomplice identified simply as Segun – were paraded by the Onipanu Divisional Police Headquarters at Obere town in Ado/Odo-Ota Local Government Area.
The police displayed the cutlass, knives and other weapons allegedly found on them during the parade.
At a briefing, the Akogun of Ota, High Chief Wadudu Ajani Deinde, said the suspects had been molesting land owners in Obere, Sokenu and Leshi villages.
The monarch said they had been demanding illegal fees and disturbing land owners from working on their land, if they failed to pay.
Dende said majority of such suspects were not indigenes of the community.
According to him, gone are the days when someone would extort money from land owners before they could build on them.
Dende said: “It was wrong for anybody or group of persons to be disturbing or be demanding unjustly money from anybody who had bought land anytime he or she wanted to work on the land.”
The chief urged the police not to sweep the case under the carpet, adding that the suspects should be arraigned to serve as deterrent to others.
The area’s Divisional Police Officer (DPO), Baba M. Mayaiki, a Chief Superintendent of Police, advised the suspects’ families and land buyers to remain calm while investigation was being conducted on the matter.
The police chief said the suspects were paraded for breaching the peace in the community, adding that they would be charged to court after investigation.
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Naira firms to N366/$ as speculators release cash
The naira yesterday strengthened to N366 against dollar from N371 traded last Wednesday, traders said.
The Nation leant that yesterday’s position followed release of huge dollar cash held by speculators into the market, which boosted liquidity in the system.
President, Association of Bureau De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON) Aminu Gwadabe, who confirmed yesterday’s rate said millions of dollars also came in from tourists and other secondary sources.
He said it was also possible that undisclosed amount of dollars came in from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to support the naira against the greenback.
Many forex traders are trying to hedge against likely currency depreciation when the CBN clarifies its new forex policy.
The demand for dollar had risen, with many buyers buying up every available greenback from retail outlets. “Dollar demand has increased due to uncertainty around CBN’s forex policy,” Gwadabe said.
The CBN has said it would abandon its naira peg to the dollar and introduce a flexible currency regime. It has not said how this would work, and this has unsettled investors, who are worried about getting caught in the middle of devaluation.
Most firms and individuals that normally sell dollars to retail currency dealers are holding on to cash, Gwadabe said.
However, the CBN’s tight control of the naira was lifted at the last Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in Abuja, where flexible exchange rate regime was officially adopted to ease dollar crunch in the economy. Analysts predicted that the policy shift is expected to attract over $12 billion in the third quarter as more foreign investors return to take advantage of the new policy shift.
Explaining the rationale for the decision, CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, said the drastic drop in forex earnings, which has made it difficult for the country to fully meet forex demands, prompted it to liberalise the market and create improved dollar liquidity. He promised that the flexible exchange rate regime modalities will be worked out by the CBN and banks later on.
The expectation is that foreign portfolio investors and foreign direct investment worth over $12 billion, which have been staying on the side-line, would find their way into the system on the back of foreign investor confidence receiving a boost as the interbank market is reinstated as the official platform for market determined exchange rate.
Managing Director, Afrinvest West Africa Plc, Ike Chioke, sees the decision as positive for the economy and financial market. He said the indication of a flexible exchange rate regime is anticipated to strengthen performance of the equities market.
“Although the actual impact of the recent move to embrace flexibility in the currency market is difficult to analyse at the moment, given that the details of the operation of the planned flexibility is yet to be announced.”
While we await the “modus operandi” of the new forex regime, we maintain that flexible exchange rate policy will go a long way in addressing the current spread between the official/interbank and the parallel market rate,” Chioke said in an emailed report.
“We expect this move to help improve forex supply constraints as foreign investor sentiments improve towards Nigeria as an investment case,” he added.
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CBN blames naira slide on speculators
The Director, Monetary Policy Department of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Moses Tule has said the naira was under pressure because of currency speculators.
According to him, the speculators mounted pressure on the naira with a view to making excess gain from currency trading.
The naira had on Wednesday, exchanged N270 to a dollar, and may continue to fall as government’s dollar earning decline.
In a statement from the apex bank, Tule said the currency speculators were determined to put severe pressure on the monetary authorities expecting the CBN to buckle and further devalue the naira.
The CBN, he said, had a responsibility for the economy and would not fold its arms and allow economic predators feast on the nation’s commonwealth through arbitrage.
While maintaining that the only rate in the currency market was N196.47 to a dollar, he wondered why indigenous operators in the Bureau de Change (BDC)chose to make huge profit at the expense of customers in genuine need of the currency.
He lamented that while international operators such as Travelex traded at not more than N7 above the rate, indigenous operators preferred to make profits as high as N50.
“We know what the fundamentals of the economy are and we will continue to take the right economic decisions on what to do and not when people sitting out there speculating on the currency think the naira should be devalued so that they could make profit out of it,” he said.
He added: “No country quotes its exchange rate with reference to the BDCs rates. The currency has a reference rate and that is the interbank exchange rate.”
Mr. Tule, therefore, urged Nigerians to be more patriotic in their dealings rather than engage in activities capable of undermining the integrity and value of the naira. The media, he added, has a role to play in assisting the CBN to curb speculation on the naira.
Also speaking, a former Deputy Governor of the CBN, Mr. Tunde Lemo urged Nigerians to change their lifestyles and support the drive towards conserving the nation’s foreign reserve, stressing that no developing economy leaves the exchange rate determination free to market forces.
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Speculators grab ex-IMF chief’s land
A 70-year-old former International Monetary Fund (IMF) worker has begun a battle to recover his land from speculators in Lekki, Lagos.
Mr Festus Osunsade, who represented IMF in Tanzania, Kenya and Liberia, bought the land in 1991.
But the land has been reportedly sold by speculators who forged the property’s documents.
Osunade told The Nation that the speculators placed an unauthorised caution on the title registered at the Lagos State Land Registry using a law firm.
He said: “I bought this land with my hard-earned money as far back as 1991. I am not based in Nigeria as my engagements take me overseas on most occasions. I was with the IMF for many years representing the Fund in Tanzania, Kenya, and Liberia. I was shocked to return and find out that my 24-year-old property was under threat.”
Osunsade insisted that he is the owner of the land, asking that the unauthorised caution placed on it be removed forthwith.
He appealed to the police and the government to bring the suspects to book.
His counsel, Jide Ologun said the government had directed that the unauthorised caution be removed.
Ologun said all documents had been obtained and updated with the Lands Bureau.
The Nation observed that building materials have been deposited on the site.
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Engaging Abuja land speculators
SIR: It is no longer news that illegal land speculation is still very much rife in Abuja, despite efforts by the Federal Capital Territory administration to tackle this problem. The scourge is more pronounced in the areas of forging of land titles, fraudulent land deals, unauthorized allocation of land titles by council chairmen and other natives of the FCT among other irregularities.
As it were, land agents would often hoard land titles in their briefcases with the hope of selling these papers when their values would have appreciated, thereby denying genuine real estate developers access to these land titles. Others in their desperate bid to get rich quick indulge in the faking of land papers to dupe unsuspecting.
In all of these, the biggest losers were the thousands of other Nigerians, mostly FCT residents who fell victims to the nefarious activities of land speculators in Abuja, with scores of them losing precious properties worth millions of naira, and lives in extreme cases. Some others too have been made to pay exorbitant and very outrageous rents fees to Abuja landlords due to the scramble for the few available houses in developed districts.
As was recently revealed by the chairman, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Lamorde, corrupt politicians in collaboration with other agents are also said to be in the habit of laundering their ill-gotten wealth through acquisition of land in the city by tactically avoiding the use of financial instruments in payment for these land and properties
This disturbing trend has continued, not due to lack of efforts on the part of the FCTA as successive administrations in the territory have made several attempts to put an end to this, all with little success. In fact, each time new policies are rolled, land speculators always appear to be a step ahead of the game.
According to the incumbent FCT Minister, Senator Bala Mohammed, when he took over in 2011, land speculators were seen as the real landlords of Abuja who were doing their illegal business with reckless abandon. It was a case of individuals or group of people claiming ownership of a piece of land that genuinely belong to someone else, perhaps with the collaboration of some insiders in land administration in the FCT to either forge a certificate of occupancy and other needed documents to sell the land or use it for personal gains.
That was why the Minister tried to inject transparency and good governance into Abuja Geographical Information System (AGIS) by introducing the digitalization of Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) so that spatially related land data in selected departments and agencies flow in a manner as build up a resource centre in the AGIS. The Minister also replaced obsolete equipment with modern and more sophisticated ones to guarantee system security and operational efficiency.
Apart from this, collaboration between AGIS stakeholders and other SDAs were strengthened to improve rapid exchange of secure data between AGIS and these SDAS for faster service delivery and information sharing. This led to a reduction in the fees being charged for land application in the Area Councils from N100,000 to N50,000 to enable more Nigerians build and own their houses in the FCT.
To make land available to real estate developers without having to go through the vagaries and chicaneries of land speculators, the Minister also introduced the innovative land swap policy which entails the exchange of land for infrastructural development. By this, developers are allocated land in a Greenfield district for real property development and in exchange for the grant, the developer is to provide primary infrastructure in the agreed district without any financial, technical or demand risk on the part of the FCTA or the Federal Government.
It is still early in the day to ascertain whether these efforts and innovations would eventually put paid to the menace of land speculation in the FCT and bring about desired development of the city in line with the master plan. What is clear is that efforts are actually being made by the FCT Administration to arrest the situation restore a modicum of decorum in land administration in the FCT.
- Danladi Akilu
Durumi II, District, Abuja
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Community protests invasion by land speculators
ESIDENTS of Ogunnaike-Erunwen community in Ikorodu area of Lagos State took to the streets in a peaceful protest at the weekend.
The protest, it was learnt, was aimed at drawing the attention of members of the public to what they called the invasion of their once peaceful community by gun-wielding hoodlums allegedly acting on the orders of one Deacon G.T Hassan, a popular estate developer based in Ebute-Metta area of the state.
Led by members of the executive committee of the Ogunnaike Community Development Association (CDA), the protesters visited the Igbogbo Divisional Police headquarters, the palace of the Ayangburen of Ikorodu, Oba Salaudeen Oyefusi, as well as the secretariat of the Ikorodu Local Government Area.
Lamenting what he called a plot by some members of the Ogunnaike descendants family to unleash mayhem on the residents of the area in order to reclaim some undeveloped plots of lands, the chairman of the C.D.A, Mr. Paul Ojo, said miscreants brought into the community a few months ago by Hassan have been allegedly harassing and intimidating the people since July 2012.
“We bought our lands from the Ogunnaike descendant family since 1999 and we have enjoyed peaceful possession of the said lands until July 2012 when Hassan, claiming that he has been given power of Attorney by some members of the Ogunnaike family to repossess our lands, stormed the community with thugs.
“The hoodlums went about beating and maiming artisans and landlords working on their sites.”
Reacting to the plight of the community, a member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, who spoke with the leaders at the council secretariat, promised to wade into the matter with a view to ensuring justice. She requested that a detailed petition, explaining their plight be submitted at her constituency office same day to enable her take urgent action.
Speaking with The Nation on the allegation levelled against him, Hassan confirmed deploying ‘some boys’ to the community but said they did not destroy anybody’s property.
He said, “Yes, I took some boys to the place after I got a power of Attorney from the Ogunnaike family to repossess the land from the people there. I went there with my boys to do my work and we have the right to stop those who may want to stop us from doing our work.
“Those boys will remain there until those living in the community comply with the terms of the new executive of the family. My duty is to ensure that they comply and that is why my boys are there,” he said.
Asked if he got a court order or injunction to back his activities in the place, Hassan said he does not need the directive of any court to do his job.
Pleading with the authorities to save them from the hoodlums, the C.D.A leaders said Hassan and his boys are allegedly threatening to kill leaders of the community for daring to bring the police into the matter.