Seplat made history, and the ASI refused to come down for air.

Last Friday felt effortless. Sixty-one stocks rose, thirty-six fell, and the index quietly gained 1,500 points without anyone breaking a sweat. The naira was strengthening, and banks were performing well. It was the kind of week where you glance at your portfolio over jollof and don't flinch.

This week, however, the market shifted into a different gear, adding 8,554 points to the ASI—the biggest single-week jump of the rally so far. Year-to-date, we're up 45.05%, compared to 39.55% last Friday. At first glance, it seemed like the easiest week of the year.

But beneath the surface, the market's wiring changed. For the first time in three weeks, more stocks declined than advanced. The naira lost about ₦15 against the dollar after two weeks of strength.

While the headline shows a +3.94% increase, the real story lies elsewhere: a small handful of stocks drove nearly all the gains, while the rest of the market remained largely flat.

The rest of this edition explores the numbers more. Let’s dig in.

The naira had been having a moment. Two weeks ago, you needed about ₦1,389 to buy a dollar. By last Friday, ₦1,343.

This week, that mood shifted. By Friday, the dollar was back up to about ₦1,358 — roughly ₦15 weaker than where we left things last Friday.

Inside the week, the daily dollar trading was its own little story:

Compared to last Friday, the pound and the yuan both strengthened slightly against the naira. The euro remained almost unchanged. If you import from China, the yuan move is the one to file away — Chinese goods got a touch more expensive in naira terms this week.

And on Friday, a detail worth knowing: the official place where banks buy and sell dollars (the NFEM window) didn't trade a single deal on Friday, yet still posted a closing price. A price that prints on a day with no trades is a reference number, not a price anyone actually paid.

Reserves declined from $48.62 billion on April 17 to $48.45 billion by April 23, reflecting a drop of about $173 million in just one week. Since peaking at $50.03 billion on March 11, we've effectively given back $1.58 billion over the past six weeks, even with oil prices persistently above $100. It’s important to note that while oil revenue typically takes a few weeks to reach central bank accounts, a continuous decline over six weeks is significant.

So, here’s what we can observe: the naira has experienced a subtle dip, our reserves are gradually weakening, and oil revenue hasn't yet materialised in our accounts as one would expect with Brent crude prices above $100. While none of these developments is alarming on its own, taken together, they warrant attention.

The NGX had its strongest week of 2026. The All-Share Index climbed from 217,167.57 last Friday to a fresh all-time high of 225,722.49, up 3.94% for the week. This week added roughly ₦5.5 trillion to the total value of all listed stocks on the exchange.

Looking at the bigger picture, the situation is even more impressive: the ASI is now up 45.05% year-to-date. Total market value sits at ₦145.34 trillion.

Under the hood, the activity was just as busy. About 3.81 billion shares changed hands across the week, worth ₦213.96 billion in total, that's 9.5% more naira than last week, and the number of individual trades jumped nearly 17%, the biggest of the three increases. Monday alone saw 984 million shares trade for ₦50.7 billion — the week's single biggest session. Of the 133 companies that traded, 46 went up, 53 went down, and 47 didn't move.

Notice the flip in narrative? Last week it was 61 up, 36 down. This week, more stocks fell than rose. The index still went up by quite a lot, which means a smaller group of stocks did almost all the lifting.

The banking sector came out to play and dominated the action, as usual when things are busy, accounting for roughly 72% of all volume traded and almost half (49.67%) of all the naira. Three names alone — Access Holdings, UBA, and FirstHoldCo — accounted for 21.4% of everything that changed hands by share count and 18.2% by value. Add GTCO, Zenith, MTN, Aradel, Lafarge, and Dangote Cement to that list, and you're looking at the small handful of stocks that genuinely moved the market.

The Week's Big Winners 🚀

The Week's Losers 📉

The stock market is divided into "sectors" — think of them as teams. When you examine how each team performed this week, the overall story becomes clear. 

The sector picture this week mostly continues the pattern: most things up, a few things flat, one quietly loud underperformer. Here's where the money actually went.

🏦 Banking: Kept running for a third week straight. The banking group is up 6.81% this week, and 59% since January (last Friday it was 49%). GTCO had the most money flowing through it of any bank — about ₦18 billion in trades. Wema (+15%), ETI (+16%), and Fidelity (+11%) were the standouts further down the line-up. Stanbic IBTC was the lone wolf going down while everyone else climbed.

🛢️ Oil & Gas: Barely moved. Up only 0.86% this week, even though oil itself stayed above $100. The reason is texture: Aradel alone was 80% of the trading in the whole sector. Seplat literally didn't change price all week. Oando and Eterna both ended in the red. When one stock is doing nearly all the trading and the rest are quiet, the sector index looks slow even when the underlying commodity isn't.

🛒 Consumer Goods: Had its best week in months — up 5.25%. But context matters here: this group is still only up 18% since January, way behind banks (+59%), industrial goods (+70%), and oil & gas (+99%). After a quiet first quarter, four consumer names landed in this week's top ten gainers: NASCON +33%, PZ Cussons +19%, Unilever +17%, Vitafoam +15%. UACN's 42% (technically a conglomerate) was the single biggest gainer on the entire exchange.

📊 NGX 30: The NGX 30 is the index that tracks just the 30 biggest, most-traded stocks. It went up 3.83% this week — basically the same as the broader market's 3.94%. That tells you this week's rally, narrow as it was, was carried by the heavy hitters that dominate both indices.

🏗️ Industrial Goods: Second strong week running. Up 7.70%, and up 70% since January. The cement comeback story carried it: Lafarge +21%, CAP +25%, Dangote Cement +8%, BUA Cement +2.5%. The cement names are doing in 2026 what the banks did through most of 2025 — quietly catching up after years of being unloved.

☪️ Lotus Islamic II: This is the index that only tracks NGX-listed companies whose business and finances meet Islamic finance rules — no alcohol, no interest-based lending, no gambling, that kind of thing. It went up 5.64% this week and is now up 71% since January — the second-best year-to-date number on the board after Oil & Gas. If you've been holding Sharia-compliant Nigerian stocks this year, it's been a very good year.

🛡️ Insurance: Stayed flat. And not in a good way. Up only 0.40% this week, and basically unchanged (+0.90%) since January. While every other sector is up double digits or more this year, insurance has gone almost nowhere in four months. Guinea Insurance −15%, Sovereign Trust −10%. The market's quietest corner kept being quiet.

The bond market was busier this week than last (₦446 million traded across 59 deals, vs ₦319m in 39 deals last Friday). And almost everything happening was about one type of bond: sukuks. 47 of the 59 trades happened on the sukuk side, totalling ₦401m of the ₦446m. One single bond — the TAJ Sukuk Series 2 — moved ₦302m on its own. About 68% of the entire bond market, in one paper.

What's worth your attention this week isn't how much sukuk got traded. It's the prices. Quick thing to know: when a bond's price goes up, the return for someone buying it today goes down. Sounds backwards, but it makes sense — the more you pay for the same fixed payments, the smaller your effective return. So when a bond goes up ₦3.60 in a week, that's the market saying: "we'll accept a smaller return to own this."

And that's exactly what happened to several government sukuks this week:

→ The May 2032 sukuk (which pays out at 19.75% a year) climbed from ₦106.90 to ₦110.50

→ The December 2032 sukuk (15.64%) added ₦3.00 to ₦105

→ Even the brand-new October 2033 sukuk (15.75%) nudged up ₦1.44

Three bonds with chunky payouts, all repricing higher in one week. People are willing to pay more for those payments than they were last Friday.

And then there's the December 2031 sukuk. It only pays 13% a year. It lost ₦12 in one week — from ₦95 down to ₦83. The difference? With the central bank's lending rate at 18%, and Nigerian companies now borrowing at 19–21% (more on that next), a 13% payout is genuinely below the going rate of money in Nigeria right now.

Speaking of that 19–21% range, it was a busy week for Nigerian companies raising short-term cash. MeCure Industries listed a 21% paper to raise ₦13.5bn (matures in September). Coleman Technical Industries listed two papers — one at 19.5% and one at 20.5% — totalling ₦66bn between them.

At 19.5–21%, they're paying meaningfully more than the government's own short-term debt. That extra return is the price of lending to a company instead of the government — companies can default, the government (in its own currency) can't.

Dangote Sugar's ₦486bn ask -Dangote Sugar Refinery is going to existing shareholders to raise ₦486 billion in fresh cash. The deal — they're issuing 8.1 billion new shares at ₦60 each, on a 2-for-3 basis (meaning if you currently own 3 shares, you get the right to buy 2 more at ₦60).

The cut-off date for who qualifies was Monday, 20 April. The stock added ₦4 this week (to ₦72) — surprisingly modest given the dilution coming.

Total ETP trading came in at ₦916m across 8,433 trades — slightly less money than last week. The strange story this week was the Lotus Halal Equity ETF dropping nearly 22% in a single week (from ₦197.85 to ₦155). That's odd because the Lotus Islamic II index — which tracks basically the same Sharia-compliant Nigerian stocks — went up 5.64% in the same week. They should normally move together. We don't have a company announcement explaining the gap. Flag and watch.

Check out our ranking of the top-performing Funds and Funds managers in Nigeria as of April 17^th 2026.

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Stay patient. Stay diversified. Stay learning — The NairaNote Team ✌️

Data sourced from: Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), SEC Nigeria, Debt Management Office (DMO), and verified financial news outlets. This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research or consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.