The improvement of the naira at the parallel market was reversed this week as the local currency depreciated to N790 per dollar.
The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa, on Wednesday stated that United States dollar might drop to N200 after the redesigning of naira.
The naira, which has been falling against major currencies in the past two weeks, has staged a comeback, recording gains on the parallel market as it exchanged for about N730 to a dollar last week.
The improvement of the naira at the parallel market was reversed this week as the local currency depreciated to N790 per dollar.
The figure represents a depreciation of N80 or 11.3 percent from the N710 it traded on Friday morning.
The development is in sharp contrast to the N175 appreciation recorded a week ago when the parallel market exchange rate reduced from N885/$ to N710/$.
However, Bawa in an interview with Deutsche Welle (DW) Hausa service noted that President Muhammadu Buhari did well to approve the redesigning.
He said, “The law says the redesigning of Naira notes should be done every eight years but we spent 20 years without any changes on them. And that resulted to 85 per cent of money are in circulation not in banks, when CBN came up with this redesigning, dollar moved to N880 and later dropped to N680 or thereabouts.
“So you see with this redesigning, dollar may massively fall, who knows probably to N200.”
The EFCC chair also said there was no any political motive behind the idea and called on Nigerians to report any person with siphoned monies.
“There is no political motive in this; some people siphoned and hid public funds that is why we want them to bring them out and nobody says they should not bring them, what government says is let them deposit such money in banks.
“We assure Nigerians that we are always ready to receive reports of any person with suspicious hidden money and if investigated to be true, we will give 5 per cent of the money to them,” he added.