February 20, 2017/Reuters

Nigeria’s central bank sold $1.5 million at 305.25 per dollar in a regular intervention on the official interbank market to boost liquidity, traders said on Monday.

The interbank market had traded for more than three hours from its open with no deals before the central bank sale.

Traders say the bank plans to sell $1 million weekly to each of the country’s 21 commercial lenders at a rate of 375 naira to try to narrow a 40 percent gap between the official and black market naira rates.

(Reporting by Chijioke Ohuocha; editing by John Stonestreet)