The Central Bank of Nigeria now holds an extra $3.5 billion in gold bars, all of it dug up and refined inside the country and all paid for in naira. The metal meets the London Bullion Market Association’s Good Delivery rules, the global ticket that lets a buyer sell it anywhere.
The Solid Minerals Development Fund (SMDF) gathered the bullion under the National Gold Purchase Programme (NGPP). The CBN is the buyer; SMDF handles sourcing, paperwork, and the chain-of-custody checks demanded by the OECD and the World Gold Council.
Governor Olayemi Cardoso said tying the price to LBMA quotes while settling in naira keeps scarce foreign exchange off the table and still fattens official reserves. “We’re swapping local mineral wealth for reserve assets instead of spending hard currency,” he told a workshop on squeezing more value out of Nigeria’s minerals.
Cardoso pitched the purchase as one strand of a wider push to diversify reserves, blunt external shocks, and lean on domestic gold and other critical minerals for long-term footing. Gold’s renewed appeal as a hedge against inflation and geopolitical jitters makes the timing useful, he added.
Fatima Umaru Shinkafi, SMDF’s Executive Secretary, said the delivery proves Nigeria can hit international standards when the supply chain is properly run. Kurtulus Taskale Diamondopoulos, Director of Central Banks and Public Policy at the World Gold Council, called the CBN–SMDF set-up a template other resource-rich countries could copy, praising its alignment with responsible-sourcing rules.
Other speakers said the next step is to fix the data gaps and build more local processing capacity so the economy keeps a larger share of the value at home.
