Nigeria must sharply increase investment and channel capital into sectors capable of generating economy-wide multiplier effects if it is to achieve its $1 trillion economic ambition, economist Bismarck Rewane has said.
Rewane, managing director of Financial Derivatives Company, said Nigeria’s next phase of growth must be investment-led, with capital concentrated on sectors that can raise productive capacity, lower business costs, and create linkages across the economy.
Presenting an ‘Investment-Led Strategy’ for Nigeria’s GDP at the ‘The Real Deal: Africa’s Greatest Investment Opportunity’ event in Lagos, Rewane said higher investment would increase aggregate demand while expanding the economy’s ability to produce, creating a multiplier effect that can accelerate growth.
His presentation showed investment at about $72.3 billion in 2025, compared with $166.8 billion in household consumption, highlighting the need for stronger capital formation as Nigeria seeks to expand its economy from its current size toward the $1 trillion target.
‘We don’t want a tide that will lift all boats. We want a tide that will lift the most boats that have the highest linkages,’ Rewane said.
He identified power, refining, telecommunications, and infrastructure among the sectors where investment could generate significant spillover effects across the wider economy.
Rewane said reliable electricity, for instance, would reduce production costs and increase capacity utilisation, while investment in refining could strengthen the current account and create opportunities across petrochemicals, manufacturing, transportation, and other industries.
He argued that Nigeria does not need to spread investment evenly across every sector, but should prioritise industries with strong backward and forward linkages capable of pulling other parts of the economy along.
The economist said Nigeria would need average annual growth of about seven percent to achieve its broader economic ambitions, compared with the 4.43 percent real GDP growth recorded in the second quarter of 2026.
His comments come as Nigeria seeks to accelerate growth following recent macroeconomic reforms, with the Federal Government maintaining its ambition of reaching a $1 trillion economy by 2030.
Samaila Zubairu, president and chief executive officer of the Africa Finance Corporation, reinforced the investment argument at the event, saying Nigeria should view $1 trillion as a milestone and set its sights on a $2 trillion economy.
‘$1 trillion should be the milestone. $2 trillion should be the ambition,’ Zubairu said.
For Zubairu, the challenge is now to turn Nigeria’s recent macroeconomic stabilisation into productive investment, industrial capacity, exports and jobs.
‘Stabilisation is not success; it is the platform from which success must now be built,’ he said.
Zubairu also argued that Africa should increasingly mobilise its own savings to finance development, noting that the continent has substantial pools of domestic capital in banks, pension funds, insurance companies and other financial institutions.
For Nigeria, he said, the priority should be to create the financial architecture capable of converting domestic savings into long-term productive investment.
The two speakers’ comments point to a central challenge for Nigeria’s $1 trillion ambition: moving from macroeconomic stabilisation to sustained, investment-driven expansion.
Nigeria’s ability to achieve that transition will depend on whether investment can be channelled into sectors that raise productivity, expand productive capacity and create linkages across the wider economy.