Nigeria: The Time of the Gross Domestic Producers

That Nigeria has passed South Africa as Africa's largest economy--when calculated by Gross Domestic Product--is almost old news. The coverage of that feat afforded Nigeria's image a rare shining moment in the foreign media. As Uri Friedman wrote in The Atlantic, "Something strange happened in Nigeria on Sunday: The economy nearly doubled, racking up hundreds of billions of dollars, ballooning to the size of the Polish and Belgian economies, and breezing by the South African economy to become Africa's largest. As days go, it was a good one."

But many Nigerian pundits were far from impressed. Some were skeptical about the whole "re-basing" rhetoric. Some went as far as suggesting that Abuja fudged and rigged its way to first place. Others sought to restore perspective to the triumph by drawing attention to Nigeria's perennial and persistent woes--among them a dismal infrastructure, scant electric power supply, run-away rates of unemployment, and miserable wages for the lowest brackets of workers.

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