The International Monetary Fund (IMF) yesterday urged Nigeria and seven other oil exporting West African countries to devalue their currencies in order to survive the wild waters of the oil crash, Vanguard reports.

In its April 2015 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa, which projected an economic growth of 4.5 percent for the region in 2015, IMF said, “Sub-Saharan Africa’s eight oil exporters have been hard hit by the price decline, and their average growth in 2015 is expected to be about 1¼ percentage points lower than in 2014 in response to this shock,"

“For the region’s eight oil exporting countries, fiscal adjustment is a priority; policy makers should support an adjustment by allowing exchange rates to depreciate, where flexible exchange rate mechanisms are in place”.

The Central Bank of Nigeria had devalued the Naira officially and unofficially in recent times and yesterday the official exchange to a dollar stands at N197.