By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria has officially slid into another economic recession, four years after the country recorded the first one under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
This was affirmed by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which released the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers of the largest economy in Africa on Saturday. It is the worst in 33 years.
According to the stats office, Nigeria, which relies heavily on crude oil for foreign earnings, suffered a 3.62 per cent contraction in its economy 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 per cent.
The last time Nigeria recorded such a cumulative GDP was in 1987 when GDP declined by 10.8 per cent.
The primary reason for the decline is the coronavirus pandemic and dwindling oil price caused by a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in restrictions of movement and affected the amount of fuel consumed since people were not allowed to move around.
The country last slid into a recession in 2016 during the first term administration of President Buhari. This means both terms of his administration has now been marred by a recession.
In the second quarter of this year, the economy of the nation contracted by 6.1 per cent mainly because of the shut down of the economy during the period.
“The performance of the economy in Q3 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.
“A total of 18 economic activities recorded positive growth in Q3 2020, compared to 13 activities in Q2 2020,” the NBS said in its report today
Dipo Olowookere