By Marcel Okeke
A recent report that Nigeria’s non-oil exports hit US$1.7 billion in the first quarter 2025, marking a significant increase of almost 25 per cent compared to the same period in 2024, deserves highlighting and further analysis.
This is more so, given that the performance represents the highest first-quarter figure for Nigeria’s non-oil exports in almost five decades.The Executive Director/CEO, Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Dr. Nonye Ayeni, who gave these updates during the presentation of the First Quarter Progress Report on Non-oil Export Performance for 2025, in Abuja, said the figure for first quarter 2024 was US$1.436 billion. The 25 per cent rise (year-on-year), according to her “signals strong growth momentum in Nigeria’s efforts to diversify its economy away from crude oil-dependency.”
In volume terms, non-oil exports also showed remarkable growth, rising to 2.416 million metric tons, a jump of almost 48 per cent from 1.937 million metric tons reported in the first quarter 2024. This quantum leap, according to Ayeni, demonstrates that stakeholders are increasingly leveraging emerging opportunities within the non-oil export sector. Put differently, these cheery export records came about within the milieu of the plethora of reform initiatives of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration in the past two years. Further breakdown of the export report shows that 197 distinct products were exported in the first quarter 2025 as against 162 items recorded in the same period last year.The variety of exported products ranged from manufactured and semi-processed goods to industrial extracts and agricultural commodities. Further breakdown shows that cocoa and its derivatives—including cocoa butter, cocoa liquor and cocoa cake—topped the list of the exported products in the first quarter 2025.
Other key products exported include: Urea/Fertilizer, cashew nuts, sesame seeds, gold ore, aluminum ingots, copper ingots, soya beans/meal, rubber, etc. Of all these, cocoa beans alone accounted for 45.02 per cent, followed by urea/fertilizer at 19.32 per cent, and cashew nuts at 5.81 per cent, according to the NEPC.For Nigeria, a country that has for decades suffered the pains of a mono-product economy, the NEPC’s first quarter report 2025 qualifies as a solid foundation to change the narratives. For too long Nigeria has lived almost solely on petro-dollar inflow from crude oil export, to the detriment of virtually all other sectors of the economy. It has been a victim of what is widely called ‘Dutch Disease.’
This structure of the economy has left Nigeria going through the vicissitudes of ‘busts and booms’, depending on the fortunes of crude oil—in terms of prices and production/export volumes per time. All these years, Nigeria has not only been a ‘price taker’ but also a ‘quota taker’ under the purview of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), to which it belongs.
Successive governments only paid lip service to diversification of the Nigerian economy; but rather used the concept as a mere mantra or propaganda slogan. Rent seeking and buccaneering have remained entrenched not only in the bureaucracy but across all strata of the society.
No sector other than crude oil and gas is deemed ‘lucrative.’The NEPC report also shows Nigeria getting out of its cocoon, penetrating in an unprecedented manner into the West African sub-region as well as other parts of the African continent. Specifically, ten countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) imported Nigerian non-oil products worth US$63.06 million in the first quarter 2025, accounting for 3.52 per cent of the total export value. This represented an impressive 223.10 percent increase compared to the US$19.517 million recorded a year earlier.
Also, apparently in the spirit of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), Nigeria’s export of non-oil items inched up. Thus, besides ECOWAS member-countries, Nigeria’s exports to other African countries stood at US$32.732 million, making up 1.83 per cent of total non-oil exports during the quarter under review.
These export figures undoubtedly validate Nigeria’s 2024 Balance of Payments (BoP) that showed a surplus after several years of deficit. The BoP contains a country’s economic transactions with the rest of the world over a specific period (usually a quarter or a year).In 2024, Nigeria recorded a BoP surplus of US$6.83 billion, reflecting a positive shift from previous deficits. The country incurred BoP deficits of US$3.34 billion in 2023 and US$3.32 billion in 2022 financial years respectively.
The BoP turnaround in 2024 is attributable in part to an improved trade performance, essentially driven by non-oil exports. This carries with it the potential for increased foreign exchange reserves, currency stability, and greater capacity for investment and growth.
However, the policies and trends that resulted in Nigeria’s stellar trade performance last year seem to have suddenly been overtaken by events—local and foreign. The dawn of year 2025, and the emergence of Donald Trump as the President of the United States, and his weird trade policies have left global economic relations in an ever changing mode. Apparently mimicking Trump’s “America First” mantra, Nigeria has promptly joined the bandwagon—and adopted a “Nigeria First” policy—aimed essentially at using what we produce and producing what we use as a country. The new policy, soon to be formalized via a Presidential Executive Order, would entail deploying some trade barriers: tariffs, quotas, and bans on some products.These measures, obviously, are a counterpoise to the ‘free trade’ milieu that gave rise to the BoP surplus in 2024. In point of fact, the “Nigeria First” initiative would need to be harmonized with the intents and letters of the AfCFTA and ECOWAS trade treaty.
Under the “Nigeria First” order, no procurement of foreign goods or services already available locally shall proceed without justification and a written waiver from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP). Implicit in this is a loss of Nigeria’s patronage of goods and services of a number of countries whose export items have hitherto flooded Nigeria. And in this era of raging trade wars, implementing the “Nigeria First” policy is not unlikely to attract reciprocal tariffs (and other prohibitions) from the country’s long existing trade partners. The patriotic zeal and nationalism embedded in the new policy (of import substitution) has potentials to harm currently flourishing trade relations.
The challenge and onus is therefore on NEPC to navigate the emerging trade milieu to ensure that Nigeria’s gains in economy diversification (via non-oil exports) are not lost. Let the baby not be thrown away with the bathe water through sudden sweeping changes in global trading relations. Economy diversification is yet a work-in-progress!
The author, Okeke, a practicing Economist, Business Strategist, Sustainability expert and ex-Chief Economist of Zenith Bank Plc, lives in Lekki, Lagos.
He can be reached via: obioraokeke2000@yahoo.com (08033075697) SMS only
