Investors chase CBN’s 20% OMO yield with N4.93 trillion bids

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) held an OMO auction on Thursday, August 13, 2026, attracting N4.93 trillion in total subscriptions against a combined N600 billion on offer, split evenly between 103-day and 138-day bills.

This is according to the CBN data of the auction results on Thursday, August 13, 2026.

However, the apex bank allotted N2.60 trillion, over four times higher than the offer across the two tenors, even after weeks of aggressive mop-up activity followed by massive liquidity injection.

This voracious appetite has become the norm for OMO auctions throughout 2026—very big demand, bigger allotments, and no sign of slowing down.

What the data is saying:

The 103-day bill, maturing November 24, 2026, drew N1.268 trillion in subscriptions against its N300 billion offer, an oversubscription of over 4.2 times.

The CBN allotted N450 billion, with bid rates ranging from 19.90% to 20.46% and a stop rate of 20.39%.

The 138-day bill, maturing December 29, 2026, saw even stronger demand, attracting N3.658 trillion in subscriptions, more than 12 times its N300 billion offer.
The CBN allotted N2.154 trillion, with bid rates ranging from 19.79% to 20.10% and a stop rate of 20.01%, translating to a true yield of 21.66%.

Notably, the longer-dated 138-day instrument not only drew significantly more demand but also cleared at a lower stop rate than the shorter 103-day paper.

More insights:

The scale of demand at this auction, nearly N4.93 trillion in aggregate bids for just N600 billion on offer, reflects the sustained pull of OMO yields relative to other fixed-income instruments.

With OMO bills now accessible to individuals and other eligible investors through banks, rather than restricted solely to institutional Money Market Dealers, this widening pool of participants has added a fresh layer of demand pressure.
Analysts tracking the trend expect the elevated OMO yields to gradually filter into bank deposit rates, as lenders compete to retain funds that might otherwise flow into the more attractive sterilisation instrument.

Over time, this dynamic is expected to encourage a gradual convergence between Treasury Bill and OMO yields, narrowing the roughly 400-basis-point gap currently separating the two instruments at comparable tenors.

Using stop rate to stop rate as the fairer comparison, and match tenors as closely as possible (91-day NTB vs 103-day OMO, 182-day NTB vs 138-day OMO), the yield gap is roughly 400 basis points and 351 basis points:
103-day OMO stop rate (20.39%) vs 91-day NTB stop rate (16.30%) → 409bps
138-day OMO stop rate (20.01%) vs 182-day NTB stop rate (16.50%) → 351bps

What you should know:

This auction adds to what has already been one of the CBN’s most active OMO sterilisation stretches of the year just a week after pumping a net N5.21 trillion into the banking system, with a single N2.48 trillion Open Market Operations (OMO) repayment on August 11.

The auction follows a combined N4.69 trillion mopped up across auctions on August 3 and 4, and over N7 trillion absorbed through OMO auctions in July alone.
The consistency of demand at each successive auction, even after such large sums have already been pulled from the banking system, suggests system liquidity remains elevated enough to sustain continued heavy participation.

With the stop rate on OMO bills now at 20.4%, well above comparable Treasury Bill returns, the instrument continues to stand out as one of the more attractive risk-free options.

OMO Bills are now available to Nigerian investors, both institutional and retail, in the current high-rate environment. Individual retail investors now have access through their banks.