“Stability is not everything,” the German economist and former finance minister Karl Schiller once observed, “but without stability, everything is nothing.” Nigeria in mid-2026 increasingly demonstrates the wisdom of the second half of that proposition. It may also be approaching the point at which the first deserves greater attention.
Consider where we stand. Headline inflation declined to 15.91 per cent in June 2026; core inflation stood at 15.92 per cent, though food inflation remained higher at 17.52 per cent. The foreign exchange market is far calmer than in 2023 and 2024, the official rate near ₦1,380 to the dollar and the parallel-market gap under two per cent. External reserves have passed $52 billion, a seventeen-year high; official-channel remittances have surged; and broad money growth has cooled from above 56 per cent in 2024 to under 14 per cent.
These gains reflect restrictive monetary policy and foreign exchange reform, but also fiscal developments, food prices, base effects and supply conditions. The Central Bank of Nigeria deserves credit for the progress made, yet the more important question is what comes next. If stabilisation succeeds, what is stability for? The answer is growth in investment, productivity, employment and real incomes. In a market economy, much of that growth depends on viable businesses obtaining credit at prices that make investment sensible. That is the arithmetic now confronting the Monetary Policy Committee.
