Nigeria’s Non-Oil Exports Soar to Record ₦9.2 Trillion in First Nine Months of 2025

Nigeria’s long-running quest to diversify its economy away from crude oil received a significant boost in 2025, as non-oil exports climbed to a historic ₦9.2 trillion within the first nine months of the year. This represents a remarkable 48 percent increase compared to the ₦6.2 trillion recorded over the same period in 2024, according to the latest Foreign Trade in Goods Statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The surge marks the strongest non-oil export performance since at least 2015, when the NBS began publishing consistent and comparable trade data. While the figures underscore the growing importance of non-oil activities in Nigeria’s external trade, they also reveal the continued structural dominance of oil and gas in the country’s export earnings.

A key driver of the impressive growth is the sharp adjustment in Nigeria’s exchange rate following the naira devaluation of mid-2023. By weakening the currency, Nigerian goods became more competitively priced in international markets, allowing exporters to earn higher naira revenues even when export volumes did not rise proportionately. As a result, the naira value of exports has expanded rapidly, reshaping the country’s trade profile in a relatively short period.

To put the scale of the change in perspective, total non-oil exports for the entire year of 2023 stood at just ₦3.1 trillion. In contrast, the first nine months of 2025 alone have already generated nearly three times that amount, highlighting how dramatically export values have repriced under the new exchange rate regime.

Quarterly and monthly data from the NBS further illustrate this acceleration. In the third quarter of 2025, non-oil exports reached ₦2.996 trillion, up from ₦2.5 trillion in the corresponding quarter of 2024. This compares sharply with ₦683 billion in Q3 2023 and ₦438 billion in Q3 2022, underscoring the rapid pace of growth over just a few years.

Monthly figures show that Nigeria is now approaching what was once an unthinkable threshold. In July 2025, non-oil exports stood at ₦1.23 trillion, followed by ₦880 billion in August and ₦890 billion in September. On average, the country is now generating close to ₦1 trillion per month from non-oil exports, a level that was unattainable under the previous exchange rate framework.

However, the NBS data—published in naira terms—also comes with an important caveat. Currency depreciation mechanically inflates export values, meaning that rising figures do not always reflect equivalent increases in physical export volumes. In real terms, the diversification story, while encouraging, remains incomplete.

Despite the record performance, non-oil exports still account for only about 12 to 14 percent of Nigeria’s total export earnings on a monthly basis in Q3 2025. Crude oil, refined petroleum products, and natural gas continue to dominate the export basket, leaving Nigeria’s foreign exchange inflows highly vulnerable to swings in global oil prices.

A closer look at the composition of non-oil exports reveals that growth is being driven largely by capital-intensive and energy-linked sectors rather than broad-based manufacturing. In Q3 2025, products of the chemical and allied industries generated ₦845 billion, while prepared foodstuffs, beverages, spirits, and tobacco contributed ₦692 billion. Vehicles, aircraft and parts, vessels, and floating structures accounted for ₦550.8 billion, while vegetable products generated ₦214.5 billion.

Sectorally, agricultural exports stood at ₦786.6 billion, raw material exports reached ₦1.0 trillion, and solid mineral exports amounted to ₦100.8 billion. Manufactured goods exports hit ₦2.0 trillion in the quarter, with energy-related manufactured exports contributing about ₦91 billion.

Yet, the data also exposes a persistent imbalance. While Nigeria exported ₦2 trillion worth of manufactured goods in Q3 2025, it imported manufactured products valued at ₦4.75 trillion during the same period. This gap highlights the country’s continued dependence on foreign industrial output and the narrow base of its manufacturing exports, which remain concentrated in fertilisers, petrochemicals, refined petroleum products, and heavy industrial items rather than consumer goods.

Overall, the record ₦9.2 trillion in non-oil exports confirms that Nigerian exporters are responding strongly to improved price incentives created by exchange rate reforms. It also demonstrates that, under the right conditions, the country has the capacity to generate trillion-naira monthly export receipts outside oil. Still, for this momentum to become truly transformative, deeper structural changes—in infrastructure, industrial capacity, and value addition—will be required to reduce Nigeria’s long-standing dependence on oil and gas.