Dele Oye urges the CBN to publish clearer reserve data and assess the true costs and benefits of holding foreign-currency buffers.
Dele Oye, chairman of the Alliance for Economic Research and Ethics, has disputed an estimate suggesting Nigeria loses more than $10 billion each year by maintaining its foreign-exchange reserves, arguing that the calculation oversimplifies the costs and benefits involved.
In a policy intervention dated October 18, 2026, Oye responded to former AMCON managing director Mustafa Chike-Obi, who had compared an estimated three per cent return on foreign assets with a 20 per cent cost of naira funds. Oye said the resulting interest-rate difference could not automatically be treated as the Central Bank of Nigeria’s actual annual loss.
According to Oye, a credible assessment must identify how reserves are accumulated and financed, the liabilities associated with them, exchange-rate movements, hedging arrangements and the maturity of both assets and obligations. Dollar-denominated returns and naira interest rates, he argued, are not directly interchangeable measures.
He described external reserves as a financial safeguard against disruptions such as declining oil receipts, capital flight, exchange-rate pressure and restricted access to external borrowing. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that maintaining reserves has economic costs and should not be insulated from scrutiny.
Oye called for quarterly disclosures distinguishing gross reserves, liquid assets, encumbered holdings and net international reserves. He also proposed transparent benchmarks for import cover and short-term external debt, alongside reporting on foreign investors’ holdings of short-term central bank instruments.
He cautioned against automatically diverting reserves to domestic projects or debt repayment without evaluating the consequences for monetary stability. Instead, he advocated separate fiscal savings rules, reduced dependence on volatile portfolio inflows, greater reserve diversification and stronger channels for export earnings and remittances.
The disagreement highlights a substantive policy question: not simply whether Nigeria should hold more or fewer reserves, but what level of protection the country needs and what it pays to obtain it.
