Nigeria's 2025 trade figures tell a story of an economy that has perfected the art of selling raw and buying refined. When commodities are categorised into sectors, a surplus of ₦20.71 trillion is achieved, a number that looks reassuring until you pull the crude oil thread.
Crude alone contributed ₦47.43 trillion to exports, more than all other sectors combined. Strip it out, and the picture inverts sharply: a ₦26.72 trillion non-oil deficit, revealing an economy structurally reliant on a single underground resource to paper over its industrial shortfalls.
The petroleum sector itself tells a contradictory story; Nigeria exported ₦25.3 trillion in petroleum products while simultaneously importing ₦13.3 trillion of refined petroleum, paying foreign refineries to process what it digs from its own ground.
The manufactured goods column may be the most sobering figure in the entire dataset. At ₦31.97 trillion in imports against just ₦2.5 trillion in exports, it represents a 12-to-1 ratio that captures decades of deindustrialisation in a single line. Nigeria is not buying what it cannot make; it is buying almost everything it uses.
Agriculture compounds the concern — despite being home to some of West Africa's most fertile land and a workforce with deep farming roots, the sector produced a net trade contribution of barely ₦310 billion. Energy goods and solid minerals barely register at all, each below ₦400 billion in both directions.
