Nigeria’s economy grew 1.87% in the first three months of 2020 from a year earlier, the statistics office said on Monday, shrinking from the previous quarter as oil prices and international trade fell due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It is the slowest quarterly growth rate in one-and-a-half years, and comes as Nigeria has still not recovered from a 2016 recession that sent more than 13 million people into unemployment. The slowdown reflects “the earliest effects of the disruption” from the global outbreak, said Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, and comes as the government expects Africa’s largest economy to contract this year as much as 8.9% in a worst-case scenario.
