"Secondly, what we have said (and I know that IMF doesn't like it) is that we are going to resist volatility. The Naira was being attacked. There were speculative attacks on the Naira. People were looking at oil price, looking at the foreign reserves, and said that Nigeria cannot sustain the Naira at this level and were therefore buying dollars.
The banks were round-trapping. So, the first task before me was to cut off the oxygen from round-trippers and speculators. What I said was, "look, we have foreign reserves of $40 billion. These banks that are playing come and buy $200 million. What is their total balance sheet? Let us hit them." And the moment I found out that somebody has come to buy too many dollars, I would go into the inter-bank market and hit him by dumping dollars on the market. And by the time people got burnt once or twice, they stopped it."
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.
