Nigeria posted its largest merchandise trade surplus on record in the first quarter of 2026, as the twin forces of the Middle East war and the long-awaited ramp-up of the Dangote refinery fundamentally reshaped the nation’s export basket and slashed its fuel import bill.
The surplus soared to N7.5 trillion in Q1 2026, surpassing the previous record of N7.42 trillion set in Q2 2025, according to BusinessDay’s analysis of the latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Total exports in the first quarter were valued at N21.1 trillion, a 2.7 percent improvement from the same quarter in 2025 against imports of N13.6 trillion, a 18.1 percent decrease from the value recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2025 and lowest on record since Q2 2024.
March 2026 was an outlier even within a blockbuster quarter. Exports hit N8.8 trillion, the highest single-month value in Nigeria’s recent history.
Analysts attribute this directly to the outbreak of war in the Middle East in late February, which triggered a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a major maritime passage for roughly 25 percent of the world’s oil trade.
“Because of the blockade, demand for Dangote products, even to the United States, increased,” Ayo Teriba, an economist, told BusinessDay in a phone conversation. “Countries that weren’t importing from Dangote before now do so to compensate for the loss of supply from the Middle East.”
