As stakeholders evaluate Nigeria’s macroeconomic trajectory, the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) has stressed that the next critical phase of national reforms must urgently prioritize lowering production costs, expanding reliable infrastructure, unlocking productive investments, and ensuring more effective public expenditure to translate macro stability into everyday prosperity.
Speaking at the 32nd Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja on Monday, Olaniyi Yusuf, chairman of NESG, said that while Nigeria’s key macroeconomic indicators are improving, significant constraints limit the transmission of these gains to businesses and households.
Noting the growth in real GDP, which grew by 4.43 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, compared with 3.89 percent in the first quarter, and headline inflation, which stood at 14.63 percent in September, down from the 34.8 percent that was recognised in 2024.
Aliyu, however, noted that food inflation remained high at 19.59 percent in September. He explained that slower inflation does not mean prices have become affordable but are rising more slowly from levels that already constrain households’ budgets.
“The productive economy also faces significant constraints. Electricity and gas sector output reportedly contracted by approximately 11.6 percent in the first half of 2026, as generation fell from 5,400 megawatts in Q4 2025 to 4,454 megawatts in the second quarter of 2026.
“Public debt is rising and was approximately $166.79 trillion in June 2026, while debt servicing has moderated to about 50 percent of federal revenue. However, we all know transformation requires patient capital and longer-term investment in productive assets.
“So the next phase of our reforms must prioritise lower production costs, reliable infrastructure, productive investment, and more effective public expenditure.
“We also must confront poverty, food insecurity, and gaps in access to quality education, healthcare, nutrition, and productive work. We must not only talk about the fortunes of our past, but we also must build wealth for the present and future generations. Job, skills, and shared prosperity.”
Yusuf explained that Nigeria’s large and youthful population is a substantial opportunity, but it will translates into prosperity only if people are equipped with relevant skills and connected to productive opportunities.
“We must look beyond the unemployment headline to informality, job quality, and incomes. Having work does not necessarily mean earning an adequate income,” he added.
In his remarks, Abubakar Bagudu, minister of budget and economic planning, stated that the economic reforms by the Tinubu-led administration is yielding positive macroeconomic outcomes, with Nigeria recording 13 consecutive quarters of positive GDP growth, alongside stabilizing exchange rates, declining inflation pressures, and positive capital market activity.
He said that fiscal reforms have also triggered substantial increases in monthly revenue distributions across federal, state, and local governments, with several sub-national entities seeing revenues increase more than fivefold.
Bagudu emphasized that distributing these revenues across all three tiers reflects true constitutional federalism, empowering state and local governments to fulfill their mandates effectively.
To maintain momentum and ensure policy coordination, Bagudu highlighted that the President secured strategic agreements during a National Economic Council meeting between federal leaders and state governors.
According to him, the consensus establishes joint commitments across six priority areas: aligning fiscal and monetary policy, increasing security spending, boosting infrastructure investments, curbing revenue losses in the extractive sector, spurring grassroots production, and mobilizing domestic industrial output.
“We have mobilized over six billion dollars of money from World Bank and other development partners for programs to build resilience and support households in order to do for them to do better economically and generate more prosperity, more income, and therefore contribute to growth.
“We shall stay the course, because we were in the World Bank IMF meeting led by the President and Minister of the Economy, and there is this hesitancy, and so we want to restate it at all times that, especially those of us who serve the President and the Vice President, that what we had from them, their instruction to us is that we are staying the course.
“There will be no return to subsidy; there will be no return to those distortions that have helped us, but we recognize the need to calibrate and do better and ensure that we confront poverty issues, we confront cost of living issues, and we are doing so by placing a lot of the emphasis on the risk of domestic production.
“Security spending is on the increase, infrastructure support in all areas, all in a bid to boost, in an effort to boost domestic production competitively. The theme of this is jobs, productivity, and shared prosperity. Where do jobs come from? Where does productivity increase come from?
We have to get the private sector working; that’s the first, most logical step. That’s why the sequencing matters, so that those capital providers, those who hold the wealth, can have confidence in the economy to invest, and it’s happening, and we are very happy to do that,” he said.
Looking ahead to the National Development Plan 2026–2030, Bagudu noted that statistical mapping across all 8,809 wards in Nigeria is underway to identify local growth drivers, particularly within agricultural, fishing, and livestock production sectors.
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