By Mercy Gadia Adi
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Thursday painted a brightening picture of the nation’s economic outlook, procting stronger growth and deeper stability through the second half of 2025 and into 2026.
Speaking during a statutory briefing before the Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance, and Other Financial Institutions, CBN Governor Olayemi Cardoso said Nigeria’s economic fundamentals had strengthened significantly on the back of sustained reforms and improved market confidence.
Committee chairman, Senator Adetokunbo Abiru (Lagos East), commended the apex bank for what he described as “remarkable macroeconomic improvements” since its last engagement with lawmakers in July, urging it to sustain the policy momentum into 2026.
Cardoso reported that real GDP expanded by 3.98 per cent in the third quarter of 2025—higher than the 3.86 per cent recorded in the same period of 2024, though slightly below the previous quarter’s performance. He identified crop production, ICT, real estate, and financial services as the engines driving the economy’s broad-based growth.
Inflation, he noted, has also been on a decisive downward path. Headline inflation dropped for the seventh month running to 16.05 per cent in October—its lowest in three years—after peaking at 34.6 per cent last November. Food inflation eased even more sharply, falling to 13.12 per cent in October from 21.87 per cent in August.
“This steady disinflation is restoring real purchasing power for households and businesses, and we remain fully committed to pushing inflation down to single-digit levels over the medium term,” the governor told lawmakers.
Cardoso said renewed confidence in the foreign exchange market remains one of the clearest signs of policy traction. The gap between official and parallel market rates has narrowed to less than 2 per cent—down from over 60 per cent a year ago—while the naira strengthened at the Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market to N1,442.92/$ as of November 26, compared with N1,551.08/$ in the first half of the year.
Nigeria’s external reserves have surged to US$46.7 billion—the highest in nearly seven years—equivalent to 10.3 months of import cover. Diaspora remittances soared by 66.7 per cent, rising from about US$200 million monthly to around US$600 million. Cardoso also confirmed that the long-standing US$7 billion verified FX backlog had been fully cleared, restoring investor trust.
Looking ahead, the CBN governor maintained that 2026 holds an “even more positive” outlook, buoyed by Nigeria’s position as one of Africa’s most advanced digital payments markets and home to eight of the continent’s nine fintech unicorns.
Senator Abiru said the improvements had not gone unnoticed internationally, pointing to recent favourable assessments by Fitch and S&P Global Ratings. “These positive indicators reflect improved investor sentiment, policy credibility, and macroeconomic stability,” he said.