Nigeria’s economy grew by 3.13 percent in the first quarter of 2025, up from 2.27 percent in Q1 2024, following the rebasing of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has announced.
At a press briefing in Abuja on Monday, the Statistician-General of the Federation, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, revealed that the GDP base year has been updated from 2010 to 2019 to reflect current economic realities.
According to him, nominal GDP now stands at ₦372.82 trillion, a significant increase from the ₦205.09 trillion recorded under the old base year.
One of the key shifts in the rebased data is the reordering of top-performing sectors. Real estate has surged to third place, pushing crude oil and natural gas down to fifth. The top five contributors under the new base year are:
- Crop production (17.58%)
- Trade (17.42%)
- Real estate (10.78%)
- Telecommunications (6.78%)
- Crude petroleum and natural gas (5.85%)
This compares to previous rankings under the 2010 base year, where crude petroleum ranked third at 8.60%, followed by telecommunications (8.25%) and real estate (6.24%).
Adeniran attributed the rise of real estate to improved coverage of the informal sector, which itself has increased in share from 41.4% to 42.5%.
He noted that the rebasing process began in 2018/2019 and was driven by statistical and economic requirements not by government directive or political targets. “Economies are dynamic and influenced by changing consumption patterns and government policies,” he said.
