Aboki FX halts publication of forex rate

Aboki FX has suspended daily updates on foreign exchange rates following a proposed move by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to shut down the online platform.

CBN governor Godwin Emefiele had pointed fingers at the company on Friday after a two-day monetary policy committee meeting in Abuja over the current crisis in the forex market which has seen the naira fall consistently.

However, the company said in a statement on Friday that publication on exchange rates had been suspended until it gets clarification on the matter.

“Aboki FX is fully functional, but we will not be publishing any form of rates on our platform for now. We sincerely hope this suspension will lead to the naira appreciation from next week. With our decision to temporarily suspend online rate publication, we are aware that there will be limited visibility of parallel rates information which will impact decision making for many,” it said.

The platform denied manipulating the market, adding that there was no way it could have such power.

It also said similar allegations were made in 2017, insisting it does not trade forex but gets information from bureau de change operators.

“None of our data source providers know who we are or what their rates are being used for. This is to avoid any manipulation of rates.

“Our staff have a daily routine of going to the market to gather rates as all the BDCs in the country have their rates clearly displayed on their rates board and parallel market dealers give the information away freely. All we do is collate all that information and display it on all our platforms daily,” the firm said.

It also said the allegations against its founder Olusegun Oniwinde were unproven. “Aboki FX purely provides benchmark parallel rate information which helps guide our users in almost 200 countries across the world. Aboki FX does not trade FX which we have always maintained in our emails and social media platforms,” the statement read.