Six months ago, I wrote about how Nigeria is spending much more than it earns on the international market, with imports surpassing exports by ₦7 trillion in 2020. Things did not get better in 2021. Nigeria's current account deficit was nearly ₦9 trillion by the end of the third quarter.
Putting that in context, exactly ten years ago, Nigeria had a current account surplus of ₦9 trillion.
Some takeaways:
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90% of Nigeria's physical exports are oil & gas. Ten years ago, Nigeria was shipping nearly $90 billion worth of oil out of its borders each year, and in 2020, it barely hit $30 billion.
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Nigeria is not the agriculture export behemoth it once was. In Q3 2021, agriculture imports were more than ten times agriculture exports in Nigeria.
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According to the World Bank, the Apapa Port is one of the top 10 worst ports globally (out of 400). It also handles 90% of all Nigeria's exports.
It does not take a genius to realise that the collapse in Nigeria's exports is linked to lower oil & gas revenues since the coronavirus pandemic hit. Today though, we look under the hood to figure out what exactly Nigeria exports.
Oil? Gas? Yams? Wigs? People?
What does this $400 billion economy of 200 million people sell to the world?
Not much, apparently.
