Nigeria’s economy grew by 3.13 per cent in real terms in the first quarter of 2025, according to newly released rebased Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Announcing the data in Abuja, the Statistician General of the Federation, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, said the growth represents an improvement on the 2.27 per cent recorded in the same period of 2024.
The latest figures follow the official rebasing of Nigeria’s GDP, which now uses 2019 as the new base year. As part of the exercise, previous quarterly GDP estimates were benchmarked against the revised annual figures to produce updated series for comparison.
Adeniran said: “This procedure provided new quarterly GDP series, which are compared to the 2025 first quarter estimates. Gross Domestic Product grew by 3.13 per cent year-on-year in real terms in Q1 2025.”
The growth was largely driven by the Services sector, which expanded by 4.33 per cent and contributed 57.5 per cent to the aggregate GDP in the first quarter. The Industry sector also recorded growth of 3.42 per cent, compared to 2.35 per cent in Q1 2024.
The Agriculture sector saw marginal recovery, growing by 0.07 per cent after contracting by 1.79 per cent in the same quarter of the previous year.
In nominal terms, Nigeria’s aggregate GDP stood at N94.05 trillion in Q1 2025, up from N79.51 trillion in Q1 2024 — representing a year-on-year nominal growth of 18.3 per cent.
Despite the rebasing, Nigeria remains the fourth largest economy in Africa by nominal GDP. The country’s total economic output for 2024 was valued at N372.82 trillion. At the current exchange rate of N1,529.53 to the US dollar, this translates to approximately $243.53 billion.
By comparison, South Africa leads the continent with an economy valued at $410.34 billion, followed by Egypt at $347.34 billion and Algeria at $268.89 billion.
