About 19 months after the Nigerian naira collapsed from N780 to N1,700 per dollar, President Bola Tinubu’s government celebrated the currency’s slight recovery as it currently trades at about N1,500 per dollar.

On May 29, when Mr Tinubu assumed office as president, the naira traded at about N780 per dollar. However, since Mr Tinubu announced exchange rate unification a few days after taking office, the naira has been on a free fall, hitting N1,700 at one point.

Sharing a Bloomberg report on the naira’s recent recovery on X on Thursday, Bayo Onanuga, the presidential spokesperson, described the currency’s rebound from over N1,700 per dollar to N1,500 per dollar as “good news.”

“The naira is holding its ground against the greenback and other currencies. This is good news, not bad news,” Mr Onanuga wrote.

To taunt Peter Obi of the Labour Party, an opposition leader and vocal critic of the Tinubu-led government, Mr Onanuga said, “I invite Mr. Peter Obi to retweet the exhilarating story.”

Mr Onanuga’s tweet has sparked reactions from Nigerians. Some debunked Bloomberg’s claim, stating that the naira currently trades at over N1,600 per dollar rather than N1,500, while others noted that the Tinubu administration inherited the naira at N780, just under N800.

An X user, @TimedFrank, said, “Find its footing at over N1,620?   Was this the rate you people projected prior to the supposed ‘float’? Whose idea was it to ‘float’ before ensuring fundamentals were put in place FIRST? Have production/exports increased? Has insecurity been tackled? Keep deceiving yourselves.”

Another X user, @muhammadine, said, “The naira lost its value by 300% under your administration, and you have the cheek to speak to Nigerians about it. You’re literally gloating about your failure as an administration, and Nigerians are doing nothing about it. Posterity would be unkind to us all.”

“You lots are retarded. You met the dollar at 700, battered our economy, and you are saying Obi should retweet your failures,” @teebabah said.

The Tinubu administration has blamed the naira’s decline on the activities of cryptocurrency platforms, blocking Binance and KuCoin for Nigerian users and forcing them to delist the naira on their platforms.

In addition, two top Binance officials, Tigran Gambrayan and Nadeem Anjarwalla, were invited, arrested, and jailed for several months on the allegation that their platform was sabotaging the naira.

Similarly, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission conducted a series of raids on Bureau de Change operators in a bid to help naira regain its value.