Nigeria’s GDP hits N372.82trn as poverty rate worsens

Following the rebasing of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic (GDP) report, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) yesterday stated that Nigeria’s economy grew by 3.13 per cent in the first quarter of 2025 from the 2.27 per cent recorded in the same period in 2024.

In nominal terms, the economy grew to N372.82 trillion from N205.09 trillion in the base year of 2019.

Speaking during a press briefing, the Statistician General of the Federation, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, said the economy was rebased from the 2010 base year to 2019.

He said in nominal terms the economy grew to N372.82tr from N205.09tr in the base year of 2019.

He added that by ranking the GDP estimates at the 2019 base year, real estate ranked third displacing crude oil and natural gas to the fifth position.

“This is due to better coverage of the real estate informal sector. The top five activities are crop production (17.58%), trade (17.42%), real estate (10.78%), telecommunications (6.78%), and crude petroleum and natural gas (5.85%) as against crop production (19.62%), trade (15.61%), crude petroleum and natural gas (8.60%), telecommunications (8.25%), and real estate (6.24%) recorded in the previous estimates of 2019.”

He added that the exercise began in 2018/2019 as economies are dynamic and change from time to time, influencing household purchase and government thus the need to rebase.

He said the informal sector increased to 42.5 per cent from 41.4 per cent.

He, however, said the rebasing is not instituted or directed by the government to meet any target.

Adeniran maintained that the elaborate data collection activities embarked on by the Bureau led to significant improvements in the coverage of activities such as digital economic activities, water transportation, activities of pension funds administrators, National Health Insurance Authority [NHIA], Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund [NSITF], activities of modular refineries, domestic households as employers of labour, informal sector activities, quarrying and other mining activities

He added that in nominal terms, Nigeria’s economy was estimated at N205.09 trillion, representing a 41.1% increase from the previous base year value.

“This compares to a 59.5% increase following the previous rebasing exercise in 2014. Following from the above, total output stood at N213.636 trillion in 2020, N243.302 trillion in 2021, N274.233 trillion in 2022, N314.023 trillion in 2023, and N372.822 trillion in 2024.”

“In real terms, GDP growth rate in 2020 stood at -6.96% and 0.95% in 2021. Higher growth rates were recorded in 2022 and 2023, at 4.32% and 3.04%, respectively while 2024 recorded a real GDP growth rate of 3.38%.”

“Ranking the top five economic activities using the 2019 base year, crop production came top with (17.58%), trade (17.42%), real estate (10.78%), telecommunications (6.78%), and crude petroleum and natural gas (5.85%).”

The report added that Nigeria in the first quarter of 2025 recorded an average daily oil production of 1.62 million barrels per day (mbpd), higher than the daily average production of 1.57 mbpd recorded in the same quarter of 2024 by 0.05 mbpd and higher than the fourth quarter of 2024 production volume of 1.54 mbpd by 0.08mbpd.

It said in real terms, the real growth of the oil sector was 1.87% (year-on-year) in Q1 2025, indicating a decrease of 2.85% points relative to the rate recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2024 (4.71%). Growth decreased by 0.22% points when compared to Q4 2024, which was 2.08%.

“On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the oil sector recorded a growth rate of 13.81% in Q1 2025 and contributed 3.97% to the total real GDP in Q1 2025, down from the figure recorded in the corresponding period of 2024 at 4.02% and up from the preceding quarter, where it contributed 2.80%.

On the other hand, the non-oil sector grew by 3.19% in real terms during the reference quarter (Q1 2025). This rate was higher by 1.02% points compared to the rate recorded in the same quarter of 2024, which was 2.17% and lower than the 3.80% recorded in the fourth quarter of 2024.

“This sector was driven in the first quarter of 2025 mainly by Information and Communication (Telecommunications); Agriculture (Crop production); Real Estate; Financial and Insurance (Financial Institutions); Trade; Construction; and Manufacturing (Food, Beverage and Tobacco), accounting for positive GDP growth. In real terms, the non-oil sector contributed 96.03% to the nation’s GDP in the first quarter of 2025, higher than the share recorded in the first quarter of 2024, which was 95.98% and lower than the fourth quarter of 2024 recorded as 97.20%.

Despite the rebasing of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Production (GDP) Nigeria still retains its position as the fourth largest economy in terms of nominal terms.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the country’s economy is at N372.82 trillion.

When asked about where Nigeria stands in Africa’s economy, the Statistician General of NBS, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, said, “in terms of whether we can say Nigeria is now first or second, as I said earlier, the mandate of NBS is to give accurate estimate of the size and structure of the economy. In terms of ranking, it’s not our own call to be ranking the countries. Probably further analysts and economists will do that, but not NBS.”

While the current GDP numbers appear high in naira terms, it is lower when converted to dollars.

Using the current N1,529.53 per dollar rate, the data shows that the economy is worth $243,526,768,148.72 in dollar terms.

This shows that Nigeria is still behind South Africa which economy is worth $410,338 billion, Egypt with $347,342bn and Algeria with $268,885bn.

It would be recalled that the previous rebasing that was done in 2015 pushed Nigeria’s economy to first in Africa and above South Africa.

Then, Nigeria’s GDP included previously uncounted industries like telecoms, information technology, music, online sales, airlines, and film production.

The GDP then rose to N80.3 trillion ($509.9bn) in 2013 when compared with South Africa’s GDP of $370.3bn at the end of 2013.

From N200 to one dollar in 2015, the local currency has since depreciated by over 1000 per cent, making the current rebased figures much lower than the 2015 figures.

A consultant to the NBS, Alhaji Isiaq Ajibola, in his analysis of the rebased figure, said, “If you look at the quarter one GDP, it’s much higher than the last quarter, meaning that there seems to be growth in the economy. And it now depends on how you want to interpret that growth.”

He added, “In 2014, we were the biggest economy in Africa. But one thing that is instructive is that the real estate sector has taken over from oil and gas; meaning it is a positive development.”

Ajibola explained that the NBS was doing a great job for Nigeria and should be appreciated.

“What the NBS did this time around is to aggregate all the activities in the economy using basically three approaches: the production approach, the income approach and the expenditure approach. They aggregated everything that is happening in the economy and they found out that a lot of things are happening in the informal sector,” he said.

In an article he published ahead of the release of the rebased figures by the NBS, Ajibola said that based on global patterns and Nigeria’s evolving economic structure, the outcome is expected to show a significantly larger economy.

“New and previously underreported activities like Opay and PalmPay mobile payments, Netflix subscriptions, home food deliveries via Jumia or Glovo, the explosion in short-let real estate in cities, digital services by freelancers, skit makers and influencers, and the informal market hustle across open-air markets will now be fully captured,” he said.

He also noted that for the figures to make meaning to the citizens, there is the need for sensitisation.

“Perhaps most importantly, GDP rebasing creates a communication problem. Citizens will hear that the economy is now bigger, but jobs may still be scarce, inflation may not automatically drop, and living standards may not suddenly improve. A young graduate still without a job, or a roadside food vendor struggling with rising garri prices, may ask ‘How does this bigger economy help me?’.

“True, the understanding of the benefits is more complex and is at the macroeconomic level than that. The rebasing should not be politicized. It should be a vital step forward in modernizing Nigeria’s economic management.

“Ultimately, the challenge is not whether the GDP figure is big or small. To the ordinary person the legitimate question to ask would be: How is the bigger economy serving the people? Does it translate into jobs, affordable food, working schools, functioning hospitals, and a better life?

“The true understanding of the benefits may be more complex. GDP rebasing can only sharpen our view. But it is up to the stakeholders especially government to ensure that the clearer picture leads to clearer progress,” he said.

Despite the rise in the economy as revealed with the current rebased GDP, reports show otherwise.

The World Bank in May projected that the poverty rate in Nigeria is expected to rise by 3.6 per cent over the next five years.

This was according to the bank’s Africa’s Pulse report, released during the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington, DC.

This is the latest in the series of projections from the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) over the macroeconomic situation in Nigeria.

According to the Bretton Woods institution, despite some recent gains in economic activity, particularly in the non-oil sector during the last quarter of 2024, structural issues related to resource dependence and national fragility are likely to hinder progress.

According to the World Bank, Nigeria, alongside other resource-rich and fragile countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, will experience a worsening poverty situation, unlike non-resource-rich countries, which are expected to see faster poverty reduction.

“Poverty in resource-rich, fragile countries—including large economies like Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo—is projected to increase by 3.6 percentage points between 2022 and 2027,” the report stated.

The NBS’s multidimensional poverty index indicated that 63% of persons living within Nigeria (133 million people) are multi-dimensionally poor.

This is in addition to the reduced purchasing power, following the removal of subsidy from premium motor spirit (PMS) also known as petroleum in 2023.

An economist, Dr. Marcel Okeke, said despite the figure showing an increase in economic activities, the standards of living of Nigerians have not improved.

He said, “We are talking about two different things. There is what is called economic growth and economic development.

“Economic growth deals with figures, like the ones they are pushing out now but when it comes to economic development, it covers the well-being of the people.

“Well, they can praise themselves with figures but in terms of quality of life of Nigerians, it has gone down because the level of inflation is still very high and purchasing power is very weak.

“That’s why the IMF published the figures of millions of Nigerians pushed into the poverty line but in terms of statistics which the economic growth focuses on, that is what the government dished out to encourage and congratulate themselves.

“In real terms of the quality and standard of living of the people, everything has gone down. The quality of life in any environment is directly proportional to the value or the worth of their currencies.

“Our currency has collapsed and it is getting worthless so that is the problem because when the federal government increased the minimum wage from N33,000 to N70,000; what N33,000 could buy then, N70,000 cannot buy now. This means that people have been made worse off.

“Government is saying N1.8 trillion was shared in June among the three tiers of government. If you take what the N1.8 trillion can buy in June; compare it with what they were getting two years ago, you will see that what they were getting two years ago had more value than N1.8 trillion of today,” he said.

Speaking on solutions to address the economic challenges, he said, “Part of what government can do is to find way to strengthen the value of the Naira and one major way of doing that is to make the country self-reliant in terms of fuel so that we reduce importation which takes much of our foreign exchange.”