Abokifx, a website that tracks the Nigerian currency’s black market exchange rates, has announced the suspension of their daily updates following threats from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The decision by Abokifx came shortly after the CBN’s monetary policy committee met on the same day. Governor Godwin Emefiele accused the publisher of the tracking site, Oniwinde Adedotun, of engaging in “illegal conduct that affects the economy” in statements to the press after the meeting.
Furthermore, Emefiele stated that the CBN was currently pursuing Adedotun, whom it claims of “posting arbitrary rates without consulting Bureaux de Change.”
Abokifx, on the other hand, denies charges that it is manipulating the naira’s depreciation on the parallel market in its own statement.
According to the statement, Abokifx, which was founded in 2014, is performing market research and accumulating data on parallel market prices, as it was intended.
Abokifx, in a direct reaction to Emefiele’s charges, also disputes that some of its employees are contributing to the naira’s depreciation. The statement went on to say:
Abokifx purely provides benchmark parallel rate information which helps guide users in almost 200 countries across the world. Abokifx does not trade forex, which we have always maintained in our emails and social media platforms.
Abokifx further states in the statement that it does not trade forex or have the ability to manipulate rates.
Instead, the rate-tracking website exclusively publishes information gathered on the streets of Lagos, and as of September 17, the naira has fallen to a new low of N570 per US dollar.
Outside of the media allegation, Abokifx maintains it has not received “any communication from any official entity” and that “our accounts are not closed as specified in the media.”
The CBN has not stated whether it intends to apprehend Adedotun, who is thought to be in the United Kingdom.
