Nigeria's foreign-currency shortage

DURING Muhammadu Buhari's stint as military ruler of Nigeria in the 1980s, Fela Kuti, a well-known Afrobeat musician, was locked up for the offence of possessing foreign currency, to the tune of 1,600. More than three decades later Mr Buhari is back in office, elected this time, and the issue of who gets access to foreign currency, and what they can do with it, remains as contentious as ever in Nigeria.Last November officers of the State Security Service (SSS), the main domestic intelligence agency, arrested money-changers in cities across the country, in what was seen as a response to the tanking value of the naira on Nigeria's foreign-exchange markets. The central bank has for months tried to keep the naira stable at about 315 to the dollar, after supposedly floating it last June, but a shortage of foreign currency combined with high demand for dollars has caused the naira to lose as much as 38% of its value on the black market since then.
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