Nigeria’s non-interest finance industry closed 2025 at N5.77 trillion.
Fifteen years after Jaiz Bank received the country’s first full non-interest banking licence, the industry comprises four banks, five takaful operators and twenty Shariah-compliant funds.
According to Proshare, the headline figure, however, reflects a high degree of concentration.
Non-interest banking assets stood at N3.78 trillion, representing 65.5 per cent of total industry assets, while sovereign sukuk accounted for N1.19 trillion, or about 74 per cent, of the N1.6 trillion non-interest capital market.
Only three of Nigeria’s thirty-six states have issued sukuk since 2013, and takaful. Despite its stated growth potential, it still lacks a published baseline for gross written premium and market penetration.
The next phase of growth will depend on the expansion of investible instruments beyond Federal Government securities. EnterpriseNGR describes the corporate sukuk market as largely untapped, leaving non-interest banks with a narrow pool of Shariah-compliant assets for liquidity management, portfolio diversification and long-term investment.
Four developments would provide clearer evidence of increasing market depth. These include the issuance of a corporate sukuk by a company outside the financial services sector, a fourth state sukuk extending beyond road financing, a NAICOM takaful roadmap with dated premium and penetration targets, and transparent reporting on the drawdown and deployment of the N100 billion Lotus Bank facility with the Rural Electrification Agency and the N14 billion Alternative Bank agreement with Niger State.
Nigeria’s non-interest finance industry operates within a global Islamic banking market estimated by the Al-Huda Centre at $2.7 trillion, with Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Indonesia and Turkey providing the principal reference markets.
The sector has established a credible institutional base. Its transition from growth in headline assets to a deeper and more diversified market will depend on broader corporate issuance, increased state participation, stronger takaful data and clearer evidence that announced financing arrangements are being deployed into productive activity.
