A few hours ago, the @PdpNigeria Twitter handle began to tweet accusations that the Interior Minister, Abdulrahman Dambazzau, the First Lady, Aisha Buhari, the Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari and the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President, Garba Shehu, had engaged in currency round-tripping.

What this means is that they collected foreign exchange from the CBN at the official rate of N199, and sold it on the market at between N340 and N362, making a healthy profit on top.

Let’s say you buy $10,000 at N199. That comes to N19.9 million. Selling those dollars on the black market will fetch you N35 million, meaning you get a N15 million profit. Just like that.

There is no business you can do in Nigeria today that will pay off more than this. Since the scarcity of foreign exchange as a result of falling oil prices, Nigeria’s currency is worth less than it used to be, but the current value of the Naira has not reflected this. The result is that the government says the value of the Naira is worth ‘A’, while everywhere else, the Naira is worth ‘B’.

In order to manage demand, the CBN has put in place all sorts of measures to restrict the use of foreign exchange, but it has not worked, and it will not work.

The scarcity of petrol is just one of the many consequences of this policy. Petrol is imported, and if the forex to import it with is not appropriately priced, no sane businessman is going to put his money behind such a venture.

Another consequence is the criminalisation of forex demand itself. Nigerians have been criticised by the Buhari administration for using forex to satisfy their taste for ‘foreign goods’ for everything from toothpicks to champagne, leading to a ridiculous and dangerous #BuyNaijaToGrowTheNaira hashtag.

The vast majority of people who use foreign exchange for legitimate business now find access difficult or impossible, unless they have the necessary ‘connections’, and now these accusations have tapped into that.

Garba Shehu issued a vigorous denial via his Twitter page and even threatened legal action, but in some ways, it doesn’t really matter if the accusations are true or false. What matters is the silly policy that makes such accusations possible in the first place.

PDP's stories of sale of FOREX to individuals by #CBN are laughable fabrications.

— Central Bank Nigeria (@cenbank) March 27, 2016

The mere perception that only the highly connected can have access to foreign exchange, in order to enrich themselves, will definitely fuel resentment that there is one rule for the powerful, and another rule for everyone else.

Right now, as we speak, this forex policy is making multi-millionaires of those with access, with zero work. It is the very definition of corruption. This is not the not the change that was promised.

The longer this policy is maintained, the more the negative effects are likely to manifest. It is not impossible that Nigeria ends up like Venezuela.