13.9.

That's the gap, in percentage points, between how fast Nigeria's economy grew and how fast Nigerian prices grew in the first quarter of 2026.

The NBS published 3.89 percent real GDP growth. In the same period, nominal GDP grew 17.79 percent. The difference between those two numbers is not a statistical quirk. It is the weight that inflation is still pressing on every Nigerian household, measured at the level of the whole economy.

Here is the translation.

When nominal growth outpaces real growth by 13.9 percentage points, it means prices are growing almost five times faster than output. The economy produced more money than it produced goods. Every naira earned in Q1 2026 bought less than the same naira bought in Q1 2025. Not by a small margin. By a wide one.

For the person earning in pounds and sending money home, the implication runs in two directions. The naira has stabilised on the exchange rate. But the naira's purchasing power inside Nigeria is still being eroded by domestic inflation. The ₦200,000 you send home buys less in Abuja in June 2026 than it bought in June 2024. The exchange rate doesn't capture that. It captures what you send. It does not capture what it buys when it arrives.

The number that matters is not 3.89.

It's 13.9. That's what the economy is still carrying. It's still there in every market, every fuel station, every school fee, every hospital bill. Growing is not the same as recovering. That gap is the distance between both.