By Ibukun Emiola | Ibadan, Dec. 27, 2025
Nigeria’s economic narrative in 2025 was one of stark duality. While macroeconomic indicators, buoyed by decisive government reforms, pointed towards a fragile stabilisation, the lived reality for millions of households and Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) remained a daily battle against unrelenting cost pressures. This divergence between top-line data and ground-level experience defines the year’s complex legacy.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that after a period of significant volatility, policy interventions began to show in key metrics. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is estimated to have expanded by approximately four per cent for the year. This growth was not incidental; it was structurally supported by a deliberate increase in oil production and a strengthening of non-oil sectors like agriculture and services. The second quarter was particularly robust, with over four per cent year-on-year growth, directly reflecting areas targeted by government incentives and reform agendas.
International validation followed these efforts. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) revised its growth projection for Nigeria to nearly four per cent, explicitly citing improved investor confidence stemming from two major, albeit painful, reforms: the exchange-rate realignment and the removal of the costly petrol subsidy. Development partners similarly acknowledged improvements in government revenue collection and external reserves, crediting ongoing fiscal discipline for creating a more stable budgetary environment.
However, this macroeconomic progress has been a slow-acting antidote to the immediate poison of inflation. For the engine room of the Nigerian economy—its MSMEs—2025 was a year of severe strain. Dr. Femi Egbesola, National President of the Association of Small Business Owners of Nigeria (ASBON), described it starkly: “one of the most difficult years in the history of business owners.” He outlined a vicious cycle where inflation, insecurity, and policy instability forced enterprises into pure survival mode, exacerbating poverty and unemployment.
The manufacturing sector’s experience crystallises this contradiction. Mrs. Omotunde Ayankoya, Oyo State Chairperson of the Nigerian Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (NASME) and a black soap producer, detailed the profit-eroding reality. “What we buy as peanuts becomes expensive after logistics,” she explained, highlighting how infrastructural deficits, particularly in transport, nullify gains at the farm or factory gate. Her call is not for handouts, but for strategic enablers: support for local production clusters and tangible improvements to the logistics backbone.
Yet, within this adversity, a resilient, adaptive strategy is emerging from the MSME sector itself. As Egbesola notes, a cautious optimism is forming, predicated on the hope that the government will consolidate its reform agenda. More importantly, businesses are pivoting towards self-driven solutions. They are looking beyond the challenging domestic market, with its high costs, to leverage one unintended advantage of currency depreciation: global competitiveness. “Our currency is devalued, Nigerian products are cheaper in the global market,” Egbesola stated, framing export expansion and technology-driven innovation as critical pathways to survival and growth.
Ayankoya’s practical advice to new entrepreneurs encapsulates the prudent mindset necessary in this environment: start lean with family capital and only seek formal loans once the business model is proven. She acknowledges that recent government initiatives are, at least, creating better frameworks for formal financing access—a necessary step for scaling the businesses that will ultimately deliver on the promise of the reforms.
In conclusion, 2025 may be remembered as a year of painful transition. The government’s reforms laid a necessary foundation for fiscal health and attracted international credibility. However, the true test of these policies will be measured in 2026 and beyond, by their ability to translate macroeconomic stability into microeconomic relief—easing the production costs for manufacturers like Ayankoya and enabling the export ambitions of entrepreneurs across the country. The stabilisation has begun, but the mission of fostering inclusive, broad-based growth is very much still underway.
(NAN) (www.nannews.ng)
IBK/AWA
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Edited by Olawunmi Ashafa
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