The currency slipped again in early trading. This is the part of the pattern that keeps repeating.

The naira weakened again in early Monday trading, widening the gap between official and parallel market rates after a brief period of relative stability. Dollar liquidity tightened late last week. Airlines are still repatriating fare backlogs in instalments rather than full settlements.

This is not a new story. It's the same story on a slightly different day.

The pattern goes like this. The CBN intervenes with dollar supply. The rate firms up. The intervention pauses or eases. The rate slides. The gap between official and parallel rates widens. Importers adjust their costs. Consumers pay more. The CBN intervenes again.

That's not an exchange rate policy. That's a managed queue. What's being stabilised isn't the naira's value — it's the gap between the two rates, and only for as long as someone is manually supplying the dollars to keep it there.

The problem underneath this is that Nigeria's foreign exchange earnings are still oil-dependent, still lumpy, still subject to production disruptions and global price movements. When oil export proceeds come in, dollar supply improves. When they don't, it tightens. What the CBN is doing is smoothing those peaks and troughs with intervention reserves. That works until the reserves get stretched.

The CBN meets next week. Whether they cut rates or hold will signal which problem they think is more urgent right now: the inflation that's slowing, or the currency that keeps slipping. Both are real. They can't fully fix both at the same meeting.