Nigeria’s economic growth remains uneven, with only eight sectors recording expansion above 5% in the second quarter of 2026. The Nigerian Economic Summit Group’s (NESG) 2026Q2 GDP Alert, released on Wednesday, highlights this trend.
The group notes that while economic activity expanded across several sectors, growth remained concentrated in a limited number of areas. This indicates persistent constraints affecting productivity, investment, and job creation.
Uneven Growth Across Sectors
Nigeria’s real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 4.43% year-on-year in Q2 2026, compared to 4.23% in the same period of 2025. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) provided these figures.
NESG points out that the uneven performance shows the need to address economy-wide challenges, including limited access to finance, unreliable electricity supply, and insecurity. Bottlenecks affecting individual sectors are also a concern.
NESG said, “Only eight (8) sectors recorded growth above 5 percent, highlighting uneven sectoral performance.”
“Targeted interventions should therefore focus on sectors with strong potential to raise productivity, deepen forward and backward linkages, create quality jobs, and reduce poverty,” the group noted.
Agriculture, Manufacturing, and Services
The organization’s assessment highlights differences in the performance of agriculture, manufacturing, and services. Each sector faces distinct challenges despite contributing to overall economic expansion.
Agriculture has sustained its recovery for five consecutive quarters. However, this improvement has yet to translate into lower food inflation.
NESG noted that food inflation has remained raised since February 2026. This points to persistent challenges in moving produce from farms to markets.
“This divergence points to persistent farm-to-market constraints, especially insecurity and the activities of non-state actors, which continue to create a wedge between farm-gate and market prices for many food items,” the group said.
Addressing these constraints is critical to ensuring higher agricultural production translates into improved food availability, affordability, and household welfare.
Manufacturing has continued to expand, but the recovery remains vulnerable to weakness in key subsectors. Textiles, identified as one of the largest manufacturing subsectors, has recorded persistent contraction since Q2 2024. Meanwhile, Food, Beverage, and Tobacco, which accounted for 36.6% of manufacturing output, slowed in Q2 2026.
“Sustaining the sector’s recovery will require a speedy revival of Textile, alongside efforts to expand the size of high-growth subsectors,” NESG noted.
The group identified Oil Refining and Chemical and Pharmaceutical Products as subsectors with strong growth, but said they jointly accounted for only 6.4% of manufacturing output in Q2 2026.
Services Sector Performance
Services remained Nigeria’s largest contributor to economic growth, but performance within the sector was uneven. “Nine (9) Services subsectors were identified as growth stagnators in 2026Q2, showing the unevenness of the sector’s performance,” the group said.
NESG identified infrastructure gaps, unreliable electricity, logistics constraints, policy inconsistency, and regulatory bottlenecks as barriers affecting the sector.
Global Economic Outlook
The World Bank maintained its 4.4% growth forecast for Nigeria in 2027. It also upgraded its 2026 estimate to 4.4%, up from 3.7% projected in June 2025.
In contrast, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its 2026 growth forecast by 0.3 percentage points to 4.1% in April, citing mounting global and domestic pressures.
In May, S&P Global Ratings upgraded Nigeria’s long-term foreign and local currency credit ratings to ‘B’ from ‘B-’.
Nigeria’s total merchandise trade rose to N41.44 trillion in Q2 2026, a 5.61% increase from N39.24 trillion in the same quarter of 2025.
The trade sector contributed 17.89% to GDP in Q1 2026, highlighting its significance within the broader economy.
Nairametrics earlier reported that Moody’s revised Nigeria’s sovereign outlook to “positive” from “stable”, citing stronger foreign exchange reserves and better-than-expected economic growth as factors improving the country’s ability to withstand external shocks.
Moody’s expects Nigeria’s current account surplus to remain sizeable even if oil prices fall materially.
Higher crude oil prices linked to the Middle East conflict have supported Nigeria’s external position.
Earlier, the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) projected that escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East could deliver a massive oil revenue windfall to Nigeria, potentially reaching N30.2 trillion if the conflict between Iran and Israel becomes prolonged.