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 by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
This marks a remarkable improvement from the 2.27% growth recorded in Q1 2024 and reflects the continued resilience of the economy, underpinned by strong performances in the services and industry sectors.
In nominal terms, GDP rose to N94.05 trillion in Q1 2025 from N79.51 trillion in Q1 2024, representing a year-on-year increase of 18.30%.
Product (GDP) grew by 3.13% (year-on-year) in real terms in the first quarter of 2025. This growth rate is higher than the 2.27% recorded in the first quarter of 2024.”
The latest figures follow the successful rebasing of Nigeria’s national accounts to 2019 prices from the previous 2010 base year, which the NBS says is necessary to ensure that the National Accounts reflect a more accurate and current picture of the structure of the economy.
The NBS, in its Q1 2025 GDP report, said the economic performance in the quarter was driven mainly by the services and industry sectors.
The report read, “Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 3.13 per cent (year-on-year) in real terms in the first quarter of 2025. This growth rate is higher than the 2.27 per cent recorded in the first quarter of 2024.”
Meanwhile, the country’s GDP as of 2019 has been rebased to 205 trillion naira.
This was according the Statistician General of the Federation, Adeyemi Adeniran.
The figure, according to him, showed an increase of 41.7 percent compared to the figures obtained during the 2014 GDP rebasing exercise.
Adeniran said top five performing sectors include crop production, trade, real estate, telecommunications and the oil and gas.
The recent rebasing covered the period between 2019 to 2023, using 2019 as the new base year.
Also, the GDP at current prices stood at 372.8 trillion naira ($243 billiion) in 2024, after the base year for calculating the figure was shifted to 2019.
Adeniran said, “Following the rebasing exercise and the revision to previously released estimates, I can now report that in 2019, which is the new base year, replacing the old base year of 2010:
“In nominal terms, Nigeria’s economy was estimated at N205.09 trillion naira, 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%).
“Real estate activity ranked third, displacing crude oil and natural gas to the fifth position. This is due to improved coverage of the informal real estate sector.
“Using broad sector classification, the Services sector remained the largest, contributing the highest to GDP at 53.09% in 2019 as against 52.60% in the previously published 2019 estimate. This was followed by Agriculture at 25.83%, and Industries at 21.08%
“The share of the informal sector contribution to GDP in 2019 was estimated at N86.85 trillion or 42.5%. This is significantly higher than the previous value of N39.00 trillion, which was estimated in 2015.”
