Nigeria slides into worst recession in three decades
By Fredrick Wright
Latest figures by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has reavealed that Nigeria has slid into its worst economic recession in the last thirty years.
The NBS in it’s Gross Domestic Product report released on Saturday, said the nation recorded a contraction of 3.62 percent in the third quarter of 2020.
This is the second consecutive quarterly GDP decline since the recession of 2016. The cumulative GDP for the first nine months of 2020, therefore, stood at -2.48 percent.
The last time Nigeria recorded such cummulative GDP was in 1987, when GDP declined by 10.8 percent.
According to World Bank and NBS figures, this is also the second recession under President Muhamadu Buhari’s democratic reign and his fourth as head of state.
The NBS said in its report that the performance of the economy in the third quarter of 2020 reflected “residual effects of the restrictions to movement and economic activity implemented across the country in early Q2 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“As these restrictions were lifted, businesses re-opened and international travel and trading activities resumed, some economic activities have returned to positive growth,” it said.
In all, 18 economic activities recorded positive growth compared to 13 activities in the second quarter.
During the quarter under review, aggregate GDP stood at N39 trillion in nominal terms, higher than N37.8 trillion in the same quarter.
