President Muhammadu Buhari said on Wednesday, in Paris, France, that he opposed a further weakening of the naira and openly endorsed the CBN’s policy of restricting foreign-exchange trading.

“I don’t think it is healthy for us to have the naira devalued further,” Buhari said in an interview with France 24.

“That’s why we are getting the central bank to make modifications in terms of making foreign exchange available to essential services, industries, spare parts, essential raw materials and so on – but things like toothpicks and rice, Nigeria can produce enough of those,” he said.

The nation’s revenue has been hit hard by the fall of global crude prices, and the CBN, which has been under pressure from foreign investors to further devalue the naira, has imposed increasingly strict foreign exchange rules to save the external reserves and avoid what would be the third devaluation in one year.

Nigeria had, last year, devalued the naira to N197 to the dollar from N160. The naira was further adjusted slightly in July to N199 to the dollar. As a result of the continued pressure on the naira, CBN introduced some measures to curb the excess demand for foreign exchange.

This, however, did not go down well with some of the foreign investors.

After the crash of oil prices last year, the CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, reacted to the naira’s drop to a record low in February by extending trading curbs and introducing bans on purchases of dollars by 41 items, which CBN said cannot access foreign exchange from the Nigeria market.

It will also be recalled that JP Morgan last week said it would remove Nigeria from its influential emerging markets bond index by the end of October, citing a lack of liquidity and the central bank’s currency restrictions.