Nigerian stock exchange (NGX), from fighting demons like foreign-exchange uncertainty, shallow liquidity, uneven policy transmission, and difficulty in converting local currency returns into reliable dollar outcomes, has achieved a tremendous feat by becoming the best-performing equity market globally in dollar terms in 2026, with a 67% return.

Also, S&P Dow Jones Indices recently suggested upgrading Nigeria to frontier market status, a news that will sound like a music in the ears of investors searching for emerging markets to make their money work.

To know more about the NGX’s bull run, International Finance caught up with Hon. Dele Kelvin Oye, who serves as the Chairman of two key bodies: Alliance for Economic Research and Ethics LTDGTE and the Nigeria–Turkiye Business Council. Kelvin Oye talked in detail about the various facets of the stock market uptick, including the key sectors driving the rally, the key numbers and data that everyone should take note from the bull run and most importantly, how the Bola Tinubu administration’s reform drive helped in Nigeria earning the investor confidence.

Here the excerpts from the interview.

With a 67% return, Nigeria’s stock market has been the best-performing equity market globally in dollar terms in 2026. What have been the key factors driving the rally?

Three years ago, many investors would have regarded a sustained Nigerian equity-market rally as improbable. Nigeria was widely associated with frontier-market risk: foreign-exchange uncertainty, shallow liquidity, uneven policy transmission, and difficulty in converting local currency returns into reliable dollar outcomes. That scepticism was not irrational. It reflected real institutional and macroeconomic constraints.

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