Central Banks & Macro risk-off · 6–18 months
A what‑if from the future

What if Nigeria freezes dollar repatriation for foreign investors?

Reimposing repatriation limits traps portfolio inflows and re-spooks frontier funds — short NGN NDFs and Nigerian eurobonds as the capital-control premium returns and FDI/portfolio money reprices country risk. The rhyme is Nigeria's 2015-20 CBN FX-restriction era that throttled inflows and built a huge unmet-demand backlog. Foreign funds that re-entered post-2023 liberalization are the trapped capital. The cascade's reserve-flight framing (Treasuries down, DXY up, BTC bid) is inverted — Nigerian capital controls don't strengthen the dollar's reserve status.

17%
our model probability
over 6–18 months
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 17% · 90% range 8–26% · 40 dated precedents behind it — a wider range means thinner evidence

Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.

The butterfly cascade

How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.

Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving

Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 6–18 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…

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What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Abuja reimposes dollar-repatriation limits on portfolio investors amid a fresh FX squeeze, trapping inflows and spooking frontier funds. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — FX carry appetite ▼ · Credit spreads ▲ · EM currencies ▼ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Market odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-08-13.