Nigeria’s Q1 2025 growth outpaces 2024 figures, GDP rebased

Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 3.13% year-on-year in real terms in the first quarter of 2025, according to the latest report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday.

This represents a notable increase compared to the 2.27% growth recorded in the same period of 2024.

The NBS attributed this performance to increased activities in the services and industry sectors, noting that the growth reflects an improvement in key areas of the economy.

Read Also: South Africa: Ramaphosa sacks Education Minister Nkabane amid corruption scandal

In a significant update, the country’s GDP has also been rebased to ₦205 trillion, using 2019 as the new base year to replace the previous benchmark of 2010.

The Statistician General of the Federation, Adeyemi Adeniran, announced this change, revealing that the rebased figure represents a 41.7% rise from the estimates used in the 2014 exercise.

Adeniran disclosed that the revised GDP at current prices for 2024 stood at ₦372.8 trillion, equivalent to around $243 billion.

He noted that the top contributors to the economy in the rebased structure are crop production, trade, real estate, telecommunications, and crude oil and gas.

“In nominal terms, the economy was valued at ₦205.09 trillion in 2019, marking a 41.1% increase from the previous base year value,” he stated, adding that subsequent years showed a steady rise with ₦213.64 trillion in 2020, ₦243.30 trillion in 2021, ₦274.23 trillion in 2022, ₦314.02 trillion in 2023, and ₦372.82 trillion in 2024.

The GDP growth trajectory also showed a recovery from a -6.96% contraction in 2020 due to the pandemic, with real growth rates rising to 0.95% in 2021, 4.32% in 2022, 3.04% in 2023, and 3.38% in 2024.

Under the new structure, crop production accounted for the largest sectoral contribution to GDP at 17.58%, followed by trade (17.42%), real estate (10.78%), telecommunications (6.78%), and oil and gas (5.85%). Adeniran highlighted that real estate has now overtaken oil and gas due to better accounting of informal sector activities.

He also emphasized that the services sector remains the dominant contributor to GDP at 53.09%, followed by agriculture at 25.83%, and industries at 21.08%.

The informal sector’s role in the economy has also increased, with its contribution estimated at ₦86.85 trillion in 2019, representing 42.5% of GDP, significantly higher than the ₦39 trillion estimated in 2015.