The Director of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE), Dr Muda Yusuf, has urged the Nigerian Government to prioritise interventions in agriculture and manufacturing to ease the cost-of-living pressures and ensure that Nigeria’s 3.98 per cent Gross Domestic Product growth in the third quarter of 2025 translates into real welfare gains for citizens, especially the vulnerable groups.
In his policy brief on Nigeria’s third-quarter GDP performance, Dr Yusuf, warned that without deliberate and sustained actions to address structural bottlenecks in agriculture, manufacturing, and trade, Nigeria could struggle to convert its macroeconomic stability into broad-based economic relief.
The report stated that the cost-of-living crisis continued to undermine social welfare. Yusuf said,
“The social outcomes of economic reforms continue to weigh on households,” and insisted that policymakers must “prioritise targeted interventions to address the uneasiness around the cost of living.”
He added that such interventions were essential to ensure that “macroeconomic stability translates into real improvements in citizens’ welfare, particularly for vulnerable groups.”
The organisation highlighted long-standing constraints across key sectors. It said agriculture, which grew by 3.79 per cent, remained constrained by insecurity, weak rural logistics, low mechanisation, and declining purchasing power. It also described manufacturing as “still fragile and under pressure,” with the sector growing by only 1.25 per cent.
According to him, manufacturers continue to face “high energy and logistics costs, costly borrowing conditions, dependence on imported industrial inputs, and smuggling of competing products.”
He noted that while the services sector remained the dominant driver of growth, accounting for 53 per cent of output, trade growth remained slow and fragile at 1.98 per cent because of high import costs and weak consumer demand.
It also flagged the continued recession in the textile and apparel sector, which contracted by 2.41 per cent, and a 1.07 per cent contraction in the paper and pulp segment.
He noted that the economy “grew by 3.98 per cent in real terms,” adding that although the figure “moderated slightly from the 4.3 per cent recorded in Q2,” it confirmed that the economy “remains firmly on a path of steady recovery and consolidation.”
Yusuf stated that the latest data showed that the government’s ongoing reforms were stabilising the exchange rate, moderating inflation, improving fiscal conditions and gradually restoring investor confidence.
However, he noted that these gains have boosted business sentiment and strengthened activity across major sectors.
He argued that easing cost pressures must become a central policy priority. “All tiers of government must sustain targeted interventions in agriculture, pharmaceuticals, transportation, and energy to fix the cost-of-living crisis,” he added.
GIK/APA