Nigeria has two economies. Only one is governed. One appears in GDP figures, tax records and government policy documents. The other runs on cash, trust, daily wages and informal networks. It grows the country’s food, moves its goods, builds its houses and keeps its neighbourhoods running. It employs more than nine out of every ten Nigerian workers, yet it remains largely outside the institutions designed to support economic activity.
That contradiction increasingly explains why many of Nigeria’s biggest reforms struggle to produce the broad-based improvements policymakers promise.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics’ Labour Force Survey, 92.93 percent of employed Nigerians worked in the informal economy in 2023. The Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) reached virtually the same conclusion in its 2025 report, From Hustle to Decent Work, estimating that 93 percent of Nigerian workers operate outside the formal economy.
The implications extend well beyond employment statistics. They shape
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