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.’
For the first time, refined petroleum products including Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), automotive gas oil (AGO), and kerosene-type jet fuel entered Nigeria’s top five exports, as per the NBS. Nigeria has famously been a net importer of these items.
‘You were not exporting those items at all last year. And now they dominate,’ Teriba said.
At the peak of the Middle East conflict in March, the Dangote Refinery quickly became a swing supplier.
As the war cut off cheap fuel imports from the Gulf and disrupted traditional energy routes, the 650,000-barrel-per-day Lagos facility doubled its domestic crude intake and increased exports across Africa and globally.
Taking advantage of war-related disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, the refinery shipped millions of barrels of aviation fuel to the United States and made similar massive export pushes to Saudi Arabia.
The Hormuz blockade also drove oil prices past the $100 per barrel threshold. Nigeria, a major oil producer, stared at a windfall as other countries scrambled for the resource.
Yet, analysts believe it helped little to push up Nigeria’s export revenue due to the country’s inability to ramp up output.
‘Even if the price is high, you may still get disappointment,’ Teriba said. ‘Crude oil is higher, price is higher, but your output is less. You shoot yourself in the leg.’
Nigeria’s total crude output has continuously hovered around 1.4 to 1.5 million barrels per day, falling consistently short of the national budget targets and frequently struggling to hit OPEC production quotas.
Total crude oil exports stood at N11.2 trillion in Q1, up just 15 percent from the previous quarter.
Non-crude oil exports surged to N9.9 trillion, accounting for 47 percent of total exports.
Within that, liquefied natural gas and refined petroleum products alone were valued at N6.7 trillion, a 51.5 percent jump from Q4 2025.
‘We are beginning to see a structural shift in our exports,’ said Muda Yusuf, CEO of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE). ‘Before now, non-oil exports were basically cocoa and sesame seed. Now we are seeing fertiliser, urea and non-traditional exports.’
The record surplus was also a function of collapsing imports, which fell 18.2 percent year-on-year to N13.6 trillion. The most dramatic decline was in ‘other oil product imports,’ which crashed 85 percent, a direct consequence of Dangote’s local supply displacing foreign refined products, analysts believe.
‘For most of that period, Dangote was dominant in terms of supplying petroleum products,’ Yusuf noted. ‘That’s a sharp drop in our import bill.’
The war added further pressure on the import side. Shipping costs, marine insurance, and freight rates spiked following the Hormuz blockade, making imports from the Middle East prohibitively expensive or impossible.
India emerged as Nigeria’s top export destination, absorbing 13 percent of total exports, followed by France with 9.3 percent and the Netherlands 9.2 percent. The five leading destinations, including Spain and the US, accounted for nearly 45 percent of all exports. China remained the largest source of imports at 37.4 percent, followed by the U.S. at 20.6 percent.
But not all sectors benefited. Agricultural exports fell 31.2 percent year-on-year to N1.17 trillion, despite strong global demand for cocoa and sesame seeds. Manufactured exports remained modest at N302.6 billion.
Raw materials exports rose to N1.53 trillion, driven by urea shipments to Brazil and gold exports to Switzerland. Solid minerals exports jumped 74.6 percent to N102.8 billion. Total trade in the first quarter of 2026 was valued at N34.7 trillion, the lowest recorded in seven quarters, according to BusinessDay’s findings.