Review of the Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Export, Welfare and Economic Growth in Nigeria: Experience from Pre and Post Era

This study focuses on the review of export, welfare and economic growth indicators with particular interest in their behaviour during the pre and post covid-19 era in Nigeria. The trend of indicators such as export, import, trade balance, terms of trade, gross domestic product (GDP), real GDP, per capita GDP, GDP growth rate and current account balance (CAB) were ascertained. As such, we also extend the review to unravel the behaviour of economic welfare indicators such as standard of living, life expectancy, happiness level, poverty and prosperity indexes, health expenditure, national income, national savings, per capita income and unemployment during the pre and post covid-19 era. The purpose of the study is to examine the state of these indicators in the Nigeria economy during the pre and post covid-19 era. The evidence from the review shows that the contribution of export during the pre covid-19 era to the Nigerian economy was much higher three years before the outbreak of the pandemic, but drastically falls in 2020 when the pandemic was at its peak. Though, there is a slight in improvement in export in 2021. Also, we observed that other indicators’ contributions to Nigerian economy are negative affected during the covid-19 era, except for import and term of trade. Hence, measures of economic welfare were strongly affected during the covid-19 outbreak, except standard of living. Furthermore, the results of the review show slight improvement during the post era. Thus, from the outcome of the review, the study concludes that convid-19 outbreak affected export, welfare and economic growth in Nigeria due to immigration ban, lockdown and restrictions on international trade which affected movement of goods and services. Therefore, we suggest that more policy initiatives and its implementation should be made and strengthened to prevent further spread of the pandemic in Nigeria