By Ayomide Otitoju
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 National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), reflecting an improvement over the 2.27% growth recorded in Q1 2024.
The NBS stated in its Q1 2025 GDP report that the expansion was driven mainly by the services and industry sectors. The report noted that the new GDP estimates followed a rebasing exercise, which adjusted the base year for calculation to 2019, replacing the previous 2010 benchmark.
Speaking on the update, NBS Statistician-General Adeyemi Adeniran revealed that Nigeria’s GDP at current prices stood at ₦372.82 trillion ($243 billion) in 2024. He said this represents a 41.7% increase compared to figures from the 2014 rebasing exercise.
“In nominal terms, Nigeria’s economy in 2019 was valued at ₦205.09 trillion, a 41.1% rise from the previous estimate,” Adeniran said. “This compares with the 59.5% growth recorded during the 2014 rebasing.”
He further highlighted that real GDP growth stood at -6.96% in 2020, 0.95% in 2021, 4.32% in 2022, and 3.04% in 2023. In 2024, the economy grew by 3.38% in real terms.
Ranking the top five economic activities based on the 2019 base year, crop production contributed 17.58%, trade 17.42%, real estate 10.78%, telecommunications 6.78%, and crude petroleum and natural gas 5.85%.
Notably, real estate overtook crude oil to become the third-largest contributor, a shift attributed to improved data coverage of informal real estate activities.
Broad sector analysis showed services as the dominant contributor to GDP in 2019 at 53.09%, followed by agriculture at 25.83%, and industry at 21.08%. The informal sector accounted for ₦86.85 trillion or 42.5% of GDP in 2019—more than double the ₦39 trillion recorded in 2015.
