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Nigeria’s economic growth remains uneven, with only eight sectors recording expansion above 5% in the second quarter of 2026.
This is according to the Nigerian Economic Summit Group’s (NESG) 2026Q2 GDP Alert released on Wednesday.
The group said that while economic activity expanded across several sectors, growth remained concentrated in a limited number of areas, highlighting persistent constraints affecting productivity, investment and job creation.
The assessment comes as Nigeria’s real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 4.43% year-on-year in Q2 2026, compared with 4.23% in the corresponding period of 2025, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
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What NESG is saying
NESG said the uneven performance underscores the need to address economy-wide challenges, including limited access to finance, unreliable electricity supply and insecurity, alongside bottlenecks affecting individual sectors.
- NESG said, “</spanOnly eight (8) sectors recorded growth above 5 percent, highlighting uneven sectoral performance</span.”</span
- “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.
The organisation’s assessment highlights differences in the performance of agriculture, manufacturing and services, with each sector facing distinct challenges despite contributing to overall economic expansion.
Agriculture has sustained its recovery for five consecutive quarters, but the improvement has yet to translate into lower food inflation.
NESG noted that food inflation has remained elevated since February 2026, pointing 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.
It added that addressing these constraints is critical to ensuring that higher agricultural production translates into improved food availability, affordability and household welfare.
NESG said manufacturing has continued to expand, although the recovery remains vulnerable to weakness in key subsectors.
Textiles, which the group 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.
It said expanding these subsectors could strengthen their positive spillovers across the wider economy.
Services remained Nigeria’s largest contributor to economic growth, but NESG said performance within the sector was also uneven.
- “Nine (9) Services subsectors were identified as growth stagnators in 2026Q2, underscoring 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.
Removing these obstacles, it said, would improve the operating environment, unlock investment and strengthen services’ capacity to create decent jobs.
Get up to speed
The World Bank maintained its 4.4% growth forecast for Nigeria in 2027 and upgraded its 2026 estimate to 4.4%, from 3.7% projected in June 2025.
- However, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its 2026 growth forecast by 0.3 percentage points to 4.1% in April, from 4.4%, 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 also rose to N41.44 trillion in Q2 2026, representing a 5.61% increase from N39.24 trillion in the corresponding quarter of 2025.
The trade sector contributed 17.89% to GDP in Q1 2026, highlighting its significance within the broader economy.
What you should know
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.
The agency 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 as high as N30.2 trillion if the conflict between Iran and Israel becomes prolonged.
