Passengers walk in the terminal building at the airport in Abuja, Nigeria, on July 8, 2020. Domestic flights were resumed on Wednesday in Nigeria after about three months of restrictions to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest move adopted by the Nigerian government to reopen the economy. (Photo by Olatunji Obasa/Xinhua)

 Nigeria's economy has slipped into recession for the second time in four years as oil prices plunged amid the COVID-19 pandemic, official data released on Saturday shows.

The country's gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 3.62 percent year-on-year in real terms in the third quarter of 2020, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported.

"Cumulative GDP for the first 9 months of 2020, therefore, stood at -2.48 percent," the NBS said.

The economy shrank by 6.1 percent in Q2, indicating that two consecutive quarters of negative growth have been recorded in 2020, the NBS said.

With the two consecutive quarters of economic contraction, Nigeria -- Africa's largest economy -- has officially slipped into recession.

In 2016, the biggest oil producer in Africa fell into recession, the first time in over two decades.