Nigeria & Saudi Arabia Trade Brief 2026

Two oil exporters, a refining gap: Nigeria buys Saudi fuel and plastics but sells a thin non-oil basket. Its goods deficit reached $1.08bn in 2024.

Executive summary

This is a corridor of two oil exporters in which one of them buys refined products and plastics from the other. Two-way Nigeria-Saudi Arabia goods trade was $444.7m in 2021, rose to $1.41bn in 2022 and $1.59bn in 2023, and fell back to $1.12bn in 2024. Nigeria ran a deficit in every year: −$383.6m (2021), −$55.5m (2022), −$1.41bn (2023) and −$1.08bn (2024). In 2024 Nigerian sales to the Kingdom covered just 1.7% of what Nigeria bought from it, and Saudi Arabia took 0.03% of Nigeria’s $64.0bn of global exports while supplying 2.3% of its $48.1bn of imports, enough to rank as Nigeria’s eighth-largest import origin.

Nigeria’s export leg is not a trend line; it is one oil-price episode sitting on top of a thin non-oil base. Nigerian exports to Saudi Arabia jumped from $30.5m in 2021 to $679.3m in 2022, when a $649.9m block of mineral-fuel cargoes appeared in the data, then collapsed by 86.2% to $93.6m in 2023 and by a further 80.3% to $18.4m in 2024, when no fuel line appeared at all. Strip out fuel and the underlying flow is small and remarkably steady: $24.1m, $29.4m, $27.2m and $18.4m, made up of aluminium articles, wood and charcoal, coffee, tea and spices, oil seeds and a tail of agricultural goods.

The import leg is two businesses: an unstable fuel trade and a steady plastics trade. Saudi supply to Nigeria went from $414.2m in 2021 to $734.8m in 2022 and $1.5bn in 2023 before easing to $1.1bn in 2024. Refined fuel explains almost all of the swing: it rose from $5.2m in 2021 to $331.4m, then $1.2bn, then $668.5m, and in 2023 Saudi Arabia supplied 6.6% of Nigeria’s entire fuel import bill. Plastics are the stable floor beneath it at $260.9m to $324.9m a year, consistently 10.0% to 11.1% of everything Nigeria imports in that chapter. In 2024 a new line appeared: $100.3m of ships, boats and floating structures.

Newer partner data show the fuel trade already unwinding. Saudi Arabia’s own DataSaudi statistics show its exports to Nigeria at SAR2.3bn (about $613m) in 2025, with mineral fuels down to SAR518.3m (about $138m), roughly a fifth of the 2024 Trade Explorer value. Plastics held at SAR1.1bn (about $293m) and ships rose to SAR459.4m (about $122.5m). The cause is on Nigeria’s side of the corridor: the Dangote refinery processed about 736,000 barrels a day in August 2026 and supplied around 71% of the petrol Nigerians bought that month. On the other leg, Saudi imports from Nigeria rose 69.8% in 2025 to SAR96.4m (about $25.7m), led by aluminium and wood.

The Gulf war has put both of Saudi Arabia’s sea lanes at risk. Since the US-Israeli war with Iran began on 28 February 2026, the Strait of Hormuz has been only partly open. In July the Houthis declared an embargo on Saudi shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb, and a drone strike has since shut the East-West pipeline that carries Saudi crude to the Red Sea. Brent averaged $114 in September and traded near $106 on 13 October. Saudi petrochemical producers on the Gulf coast have struggled to ship, and SABIC’s losses are widening. The disruption raises the price of every barrel and every tonne of polymer Nigeria still buys from the Kingdom, and makes Saudi supply less reliable at the same moment that Dangote is making it less necessary.

The factors to watch over the next 15 months are mostly about energy policy. OPEC+ held Saudi Arabia’s quota at 10.478m bpd for November and opens talks on 2027 production baselines as the group’s remaining 2m bpd of cuts expire in December. In those talks Nigeria, now meeting its 1.5m bpd quota, and Saudi Arabia have different interests. In Nigeria, the CBN cut its policy rate by 350bp to 23% on 22 September, the naira is near ₦1,330/$ and the presidential election is on 16 January 2027. Bilaterally, Abuja and Riyadh have spent 2026 moving from pilgrimage diplomacy toward investment: a December 2025 defence MoU, an August 2026 diaspora investment summit, scholarships in petroleum and mining, and talks on restoring direct Jeddah-Abuja flights.

The Nigeria-Saudi Arabia corridor has been a refining-gap trade: Nigeria bought Saudi fuel because it could not refine its own crude, and bought Saudi plastics because it had no petrochemical base. The first of those reasons is disappearing fast, and Dangote’s polypropylene output is starting to erode the second. SysIN’s base case sees Saudi supply falling from $1.1bn in 2024 to about $515m by 2027 and the deficit roughly halving. The open question is whether Nigeria builds anything on the export side, through halal food, agricultural goods, aluminium and refined products into a Red Sea market short of supply, or whether the corridor simply shrinks.

Key findings

1. A deficit in every year

   Nigeria’s goods deficit was −$383.6m in 2021, −$55.5m in 2022, −$1.41bn in 2023 and −$1.08bn in 2024. Nigerian exports covered only 1.7% of imports from Saudi Arabia in 2024.

2. The 2022 export surge was an oil episode

   Mineral-fuel exports reached $649.9m in 2022, 95.7% of that year’s exports, but were absent from the 2024 ranked list. The non-fuel base remained between about $18m and $30m a year.

3. Plastics form the steady import base

   Saudi plastics sales were $260.9m to $324.9m annually, supplying 10.0% to 11.1% of Nigeria’s plastics imports. Fuel drove most of the volatility; ships added $100.3m in 2024.

4. The balance improved because Nigeria bought less

   Between 2023 and 2024 imports fell by $400m while Nigerian exports fell by about $75m. The approximately $325m improvement did not reflect export growth.

5. Newer Saudi data point to falling fuel sales

   Saudi-reported 2025 exports to Nigeria were about $613m, including about $138m of mineral fuels, $293m of plastics and $122.5m of ships. These partner statistics indicate direction, not a like-for-like comparison with BACI.

6. Refining changes the outlook, not the export base

   The report links Dangote’s rising petrol and polypropylene supply to lower Saudi imports. Its base-case 2027 deficit of about −$473m is a scenario estimate, not observed trade data.

7. Agricultural market access is the export opportunity

   The assessment identifies food-safety registration, halal certification and logistics as obstacles to Nigerian sesame, ginger, gum arabic and other agricultural exports into Saudi Arabia.

Bilateral trade snapshot

The headline flows move in sharp steps rather than smooth trends. Nigerian exports to Saudi Arabia rose more than twentyfold, from $30.5m to $679.3m, between 2021 and 2022, then fell to $93.6m in 2023 (−86.2%) and $18.4m in 2024 (−80.3%), the lowest point in the four years. Saudi exports to Nigeria rose 77.4% to $734.8m in 2022, doubled (+104.1%) to $1.5bn in 2023, then fell 26.7% to $1.1bn in 2024. The export-cover ratio, Nigerian exports as a share of Saudi imports, tells the story in one line: 7.4% in 2021, 92.4% in 2022, 6.2% in 2023 and 1.7% in 2024. For one year the corridor was almost balanced. In every other year it has been almost entirely one-way.

The deficit was −$383.6m in 2021 and almost disappeared in 2022 (−$55.5m), because Nigerian fuel shipments briefly matched Saudi sales. It then widened to −$1.41bn in 2023 as Saudi refined products filled Nigeria’s supply gap in the last months of the petrol subsidy, and narrowed by about a quarter to −$1.08bn in 2024 as fuel imports fell. Of the $325m improvement between 2023 and 2024, imports fell $400m while Nigerian exports fell $75m. The balance got better only because Nigeria bought less.

Against Nigeria’s global trade of $58.1bn to $71.6bn in exports and $48.1bn to $67.4bn in imports, the Kingdom is a minor export market and a rising import source. It took 0.05% of Nigeria’s exports in 2021, 0.95% in 2022 (ranking 25th among destinations), 0.15% in 2023 and 0.03% in 2024. On the import side its share rose every year: 0.72% (around 24th), 1.14% (18th), 2.23% (10th) and 2.29% (8th). In 2024 Saudi Arabia was a larger supplier to Nigeria than at any point in 2021 to 2024 even though the value of its sales fell. Nigeria’s total imports fell faster than Saudi supply did.

Export profile: an oil episode and a durable non-oil base

The export leg needs to be read in two layers. The top layer is mineral fuel (Ch. 27), which was $6.4m in 2021, $649.9m in 2022 (95.7% of that year’s total), $66.4m in 2023 and absent from the 2024 ranked list. Nigerian fuel was going to a country that is itself one of the world’s largest oil exporters. That fits the conditions of 2022: prices spiked after the invasion of Ukraine, and Saudi Arabia was an unusually heavy buyer of imported fuel oil, burning it for summer power generation so it could export more of its own crude at high prices. Trader-routed cargoes can also be attributed to a destination that is not where the oil is finally used. Whatever the mechanics, the line ended as quickly as it began. It is a price episode, not a relationship, and SysIN’s base case does not assume it returns.

Import profile: fuel, plastics and chemical inputs

Saudi sales to Nigeria are concentrated in a way that mirrors the Kingdom’s industrial structure. Two chapters, mineral fuels (Ch. 27) and plastics (Ch. 39), made up 79.7% of the bilateral import total in 2021, 89.2% in 2022, 97.4% in 2023 and 85.0% in 2024. Add ships and floating structures in 2024 and three lines covered 94.1% of the year. The ranked top ten captured 96.9% to 98.1% of the reported total in 2021, 2022 and 2024. In 2023 it slightly exceeded the reported total, because both the $1.2bn fuel line and the $1.5bn headline are rounded to $0.1bn.

Ships and domestic substitution

A word on ships. The $100.3m ships line in 2024, and the larger SAR459.4m recorded by Saudi Arabia in 2025, are the newest and least explained part of the corridor. The chapter covers vessels, tugs, barges and floating structures. The likeliest uses are offshore support, marine logistics and the deep-offshore development that Abuja’s 2025 to 2026 upstream reforms are meant to attract. Capital-goods lines like this tend to be lumpy: large in the years assets are delivered, then near zero. SysIN treats them as a separate component in the outlook rather than as a trend.

Bilateral relationship assessment

The asymmetry here is not the familiar one between a manufacturer and a commodity exporter. Both countries earn most of their foreign exchange from crude. The imbalance comes from what each has built downstream. Saudi Arabia turned its crude and gas into refineries and one of the world’s largest petrochemical industries. Until 2024 Nigeria had done neither at scale, so its fuel and polymer needs became a market for Saudi output. Saudi Arabia has consistently held a tenth of Nigeria’s plastics imports, while its share of Nigeria’s fuel imports rose and has now started to fall.

Trade potential: agricultural access and downstream investment

The gap that matters is on the export side, and it has three parts. The first is food and agricultural goods. Saudi Arabia imports most of its food, is building strategic food reserves after two years of shipping disruption, and buys sesame, ginger, gum arabic, hibiscus, shea, cashew and halal meat from other suppliers. Nigeria’s Halal Economy Strategy and a large northern export base are well matched to that demand, but registration with the Saudi Food and Drug Authority, halal certification and cold-chain logistics are what hold exports back, not tariffs. The second is aluminium and metal articles, already Nigeria’s anchor non-oil line and worth $11.4m in 2025 by Saudi count. The third is refined products. With Saudi refineries and export terminals under attack and Red Sea markets short of fuel, Dangote’s export cargoes have, for the first time, a commercial reason to go east of Suez. SysIN’s upside case allows for that, but the base case does not.

Trade framework and financial links

There is no bilateral free-trade agreement, and none is in negotiation. Nigerian goods entering the Kingdom face the GCC common external tariff (a 5% general rate, with higher rates on selected products and exemptions for many staple foods), plus Saudi conformity and food-safety registration. Saudi goods entering Nigeria face the ECOWAS common external tariff, as amended by Nigeria’s 2026 Fiscal Policy Measures, which cut duties on 127 lines from 1 April. The bilateral institutions are older and mainly political: a Joint Commission, a 2025 defence MoU, and a chamber-to-chamber agreement between the two business federations. The 2026 activity has been more commercial. It includes the Nigeria-Saudi Diaspora Investment and Tourism Exhibition Summit in Abuja (4 to 5 August), which its organisers plan to hold every two years in alternating capitals; the Information Minister’s 23 September invitation to Saudi investors in agriculture, energy, aviation, fintech and mining; 50 Saudi scholarships for Nigerian students in petroleum and mineral studies; and talks on restoring direct Jeddah-Abuja flights.

Two chokepoints: Gulf shipping and the trade corridor

Since 28 February 2026 the Saudi side of this corridor has been operating under the largest oil-supply disruption on record. The Strait of Hormuz, the route for the Kingdom’s Gulf-coast crude, refined products and polymers, was effectively closed for weeks and has since reopened only partially, under convoy and ship-to-ship transfers. Gulf oil flows excluding Iran recovered to more than 81% of pre-war levels in September. Saudi Arabia first moved its exports west through the 5m bpd East-West pipeline to Yanbu. Then the Houthis declared an embargo on Saudi shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb on 22 July, and a drone strike in September forced the pipeline’s closure. Riyadh has sent crude back through Hormuz, and Saudi crude exports reached about 6m bpd in September. Saudi infrastructure is still under attack: the Kingdom’s main airport came under attack again on 11 October.

Plastics: Saudi supply risk and Nigerian processing

More than 80% of Middle Eastern polyethylene export capacity depends on the Strait of Hormuz, and Saudi Arabia’s biggest complexes are at Jubail on the Gulf coast. SABIC declared force majeure on several products in March, Jubail was struck in April, and polypropylene raffia prices in West Africa jumped 39% in the first weeks of the conflict. Prices have eased as Gulf flows recovered. SABIC moved polymer shipments to its Red Sea ports, with west-coast volumes up 150% in the second quarter, but those ports are now exposed to the Houthi embargo. SABIC lost $221m in the second quarter, and UBS expects a $693m loss for 2026. For Nigerian converters, Saudi resin is no longer automatically the cheapest or most reliable option. That strengthens the case for Dangote’s polypropylene and other domestic polymer supply, and for diversifying where imports come from. It also explains why Saudi plastics sales to Nigeria held up in value in 2025 while volumes were probably lower.

Dangote rewrites the import bill

The Dangote refinery is the most important single factor in this corridor’s outlook. It processed an average of 736,470 bpd in August 2026, 113% of nameplate capacity. It supplied about 71% of Nigerian petrol deliveries that month, and national petrol imports fell 26% to 14.6m litres a day. Nigeria earned $750m from petrol exports in the first half of 2026 and is now a net exporter of refined products. The change is not finished, though. Argus estimates Nigeria still imported about 78,000 bpd of petrol between April and August, because consumption of about 279,000 bpd exceeded Dangote’s petrol output. Imports reached $715m in the second quarter during a pricing dispute with marketers. The regulator suspended import licences in February and March, then approved 830,000 tonnes of petrol imports for the fourth quarter of 2026. Some of those cargoes will come from Saudi refineries. That is why SysIN’s base case still has a residual fuel line of $105m to $160m a year rather than zero.

OPEC+: production baselines and oil revenue

Nigeria and Saudi Arabia meet most often not as trading partners but as OPEC members. On 4 October the core OPEC+ group held Saudi Arabia’s required production at 10.478m bpd for November, and its next meeting is on 1 November. The group’s remaining 2m bpd of cuts expire at the end of 2026, the United Arab Emirates left OPEC in May, and new 2027 production baselines are being set from a capacity review. Nigeria wants a higher baseline that reflects its recovery: crude output was 1.500m bpd in August, the fourth consecutive month at quota, and crude plus condensate was 1.678m bpd. Saudi Arabia wants to keep the group together while its own exports are constrained by war. OPEC has also cut its 2026 demand growth forecast to 400,000 bpd. How the baseline talks end will affect Nigeria’s oil revenue, and through it the naira and import demand, far more than any bilateral trade measure.

Nigeria: monetary conditions and the election cycle

Nigeria’s macro conditions now favour import demand in general but work against Saudi fuel in particular. The CBN cut its policy rate by 350bp to 23% on 22 September, describing the move as an operational reset. External reserves were $55.25bn on 18 September, the second-quarter current-account surplus was $7.54bn, and the naira has held near ₦1,330/$. Headline inflation eased to 15.39% in August, although higher pump prices are expected to push the September figure up. NBS data put the second-quarter 2026 merchandise trade surplus at ₦12.60trn, with imports down 12.55% year on year. The 16 January 2027 presidential election is the main political variable. Fuel pricing, petrol import licensing and the Dangote-marketer relationship are all live campaign issues. Any return to administered fuel prices or broad import licensing would bring Saudi refined products back into the market.

Our assessment: base case for 2025 to 2027

SysIN’s base case starts from the 2024 product mix in the Trade Explorer and applies explicit price, volume and growth assumptions. It is calibrated to Saudi Arabia’s reported 2025 figures. Saudi exports to Nigeria fall from $1.1bn in 2024 to about $613m in 2025, as the fuel line drops to about $138m with Dangote at scale. They hold near $593m in 2026, because higher Brent (an EIA average of $96) and the fourth-quarter import licences briefly lift the fuel line to about $160m and polymer prices keep plastics near $307m. They ease to about $515m in 2027, as Brent falls toward $84, residual fuel imports shrink to about $105m and domestic polypropylene takes about a tenth of the plastics line. Nigerian exports rise from $18.4m to about $31m in 2025, in line with the 69.8% rise in Saudi-reported imports, then to about $36m in 2026 and $42m in 2027 on aluminium and agricultural growth. The deficit narrows from −$1.08bn in 2024 to about −$582m in 2025, −$557m in 2026 and −$473m in 2027. These are scenario estimates, not data: the Trade Explorer series ends in 2024, and Saudi statistics differ from it in level.

Priorities for a trade ministry or policy body

The priority is to use the political goodwill of 2026 to remove the non-tariff barriers that keep Nigerian food out of the Saudi market. That means a structured SFDA registration and halal-certification programme for a short list of products (sesame, ginger, gum arabic, hibiscus, shea, cashew and processed halal meat), a Saudi-accredited testing and certification presence in Kano or Abuja, and a working group under the Joint Commission focused only on agricultural market access. In the OPEC+ baseline talks, Nigeria should argue for a baseline that reflects its restored capacity and the domestic crude needs of a 650,000 to 700,000 bpd refinery that will double in size. On imports, policy should be stable and predictable. Stop-start petrol import licensing helps no one, and a clear medium-term framework for refined-product imports and exports would let the Saudi fuel line decline smoothly rather than in sudden swings.

Priorities for a commercial institution or investor

The clearest opportunity is in agricultural aggregation, processing and certification aimed at Gulf buyers. This is a market where Nigeria’s exports grew 69.8% in 2025 from a very low base and where Saudi food-security buying is now a strategic priority. Second, refined-product trading: while Gulf refineries and terminals remain targets, Nigerian gasoline and jet fuel have a window into Red Sea and East African markets that trade-finance providers can support. Third, the polymer chain: Nigerian converters should secure supply from more than one source, and investors should look at co-investment between Saudi petrochemical producers and Nigerian downstream capacity. Fourth, Sharia-compliant finance through the Islamic Development Bank group and Gulf banks is the most direct way to bring Saudi capital into Nigerian projects, and remains largely unused. All of these should be priced for election-season policy risk in Nigeria and war risk on Saudi sea lanes.

Data sources and limitations

All bilateral trade flows are sourced from OEC BACI (Trade Explorer, UN Comtrade harmonised), in USD. This brief covers goods only; services, including pilgrimage-related travel spending, are not captured. Products follow Harmonised System chapter-level classifications.

Frequently asked questions

Did Nigeria run a trade deficit with Saudi Arabia?

Yes, in every year from 2021 to 2024. The deficit nearly disappeared in 2022 but reached −$1.41bn in 2023 and −$1.08bn in 2024.

What does Nigeria export to Saudi Arabia?

The recurring non-oil basket consists of aluminium, wood and charcoal, ginger-led spices, oil seeds and other agricultural goods. A $649.9m mineral-fuel spike in 2022 did not persist.

What does Nigeria import from Saudi Arabia?

Refined fuel and plastics dominate. Saudi Arabia consistently supplied about a tenth of Nigeria’s plastics imports, and ships and floating structures added $100.3m in 2024.

Is there a bilateral free-trade agreement?

The October 2026 assessment reports no bilateral FTA. Trade faces the GCC and ECOWAS tariff regimes, alongside Saudi conformity, food-safety and halal-registration requirements.

Are the 2027 projections observed trade data?

No. The base-case deficit of about −$473m, upside deficit of −$196m and downside deficit of −$787m are SysIN scenario estimates. The comparable BACI historical series ends in 2024.