Nigeria’s Inflation Drops to 23.18%
Nigeria’s headline inflation rate eased to 23.18% year-on-year in February 2025, according to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), marking a decline compared to the previous month.
The NBS revealed that inflation fell in February after the Bureau rebased its Consumer Price Index (CPI) to reflect changes in consumption patterns. Following the rebasing exercise, which updated the data to 2024 as the base year (previously 2009), inflation dropped sharply from 34.80% in December 2024 to 24.48% in January 2025.
The food inflation rate in February 2025 was 23.51% on a year-on-year basis, a 14.41% decrease compared to February 2024, when it stood at 37.92%. This significant decline is partly attributed to the change in the base year. On a month-on-month basis, food inflation in February 2025 was 1.67%.
On a month-on-month basis, the overall headline inflation rate in February 2025 stood at 2.04%.
Regarding regional disparities, the urban inflation rate in February 2025 was 25.15% year-on-year, down by 8.51 percentage points from the 33.66% recorded in February 2024. The urban inflation rate on a month-on-month basis was 2.40% in February. The corresponding 12-month average for the urban inflation rate stood at 32.22% in February 2025, an increase of 4.28 percentage points compared to 27.93% in February 2024.
In rural areas, the inflation rate was 19.89% year-on-year in February 2025, a 10.09% reduction from the 29.99% recorded in February 2024. The rural inflation rate increased by 1.16% on a month-on-month basis in February. The corresponding 12-month average for the rural inflation rate was 27.94%, showing a 3.33% increase compared to 24.61% in February 2024.
Inflation in Nigeria had reached repeated 28-year highs in 2024, primarily due to the government’s decisions under President Bola Tinubu to end costly fuel subsidies and devalue the naira after he took office in May 2023.
The NBS also noted that the CPI is weighted by consumption expenditure patterns that differ across states and regions, meaning comparisons of inflation rates between states may be misleading.
