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Nigeria has long been the kind of country that ships oil out. In 2025, Aliko Dangote's refinery started pulling it in.
The Central Bank of Nigeria's latest balance of payments report, covering full-year 2025, reveals that crude oil imports linked to the Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals reached $3.74 billion during the year, an extraordinary figure for a country whose economic identity has been built on being an exporter of raw crude. The world's largest single-train refinery, located on the Lagos coast, needs feedstock, and last year it needed a lot of it.
The CBN said the refinery's crude acquisitions were a significant factor influencing Nigeria's current account performance, which posted a surplus of $14.04 billion in 2025. That number is down from $19.03 billion in 2024, but it more than doubles the $6.42 billion surplus recorded in 2023, a reminder that the underlying trade position has improved substantially even as some headline figures softened.
Crude oil export revenues reflected the shifting dynamics, declining 14 percent to $31.54 billion from $36.85 billion the year before. Part of that crude, rather than heading to foreign buyers, was being redirected into domestic processing. The trade-off, at least in theory, is that Nigeria captures more value by selling refined products rather than raw barrels.
The early returns on that theory look reasonable. Refined petroleum exports generated $5.85 billion in 2025, a new line item that barely existed before the refinery reached meaningful output. Gas exports also rose, contributing to a goods account surplus of $14.51 billion, up from $13.17 billion in 2024, even as crude export volumes fell.
The refinery's domestic output is also trimming Nigeria's import bill in a way that matters. With locally refined fuel available in increasing volumes, petroleum product imports dropped nearly 29 percent to $10 billion from $14.06 billion the year before. That's a saving of more than $4 billion on a single import category, channeled back into the country's external accounts.
Non-oil imports moved in the opposite direction, rising to $29.24 billion from $25.74 billion in 2024, a signal that domestic demand remains strong and that Nigeria continues to rely heavily on foreign goods outside the energy sector. Investment outflows also increased as Nigerians expanded their holdings in direct and portfolio assets abroad.
The overall balance of payments surplus landed at $4.23 billion, below the $6.83 billion posted in 2024 but still positive. Nigeria's external reserves closed December 2025 at $45.75 billion, a 13.83 percent gain year on year, supported by improved inflows and stronger external buffers.
What the data sketches, taken together, is a country whose petroleum trade architecture is actively reorganizing itself around a single facility. Dangote's refinery was once dismissed as an unlikely megaproject. The CBN's own numbers now treat it as a structural driver of the national accounts.
