Olayiwola Matthew
Nigeria’s headline inflation rate declined to 15.1 percent in January, down slightly from the 15.15 percent recorded in December 2025, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The NBS disclosed the figure on Monday in its latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report.
According to the report: “The January 2026 Headline inflation rate showed a decrease of 0.05% compared to the December 2025 Headline inflation rate.
“On a year-on-year basis, the Headline inflation rate was 12.51% lower than the rate recorded in January 2025 (27.61%).
“This shows that the Headline inflation rate (year-on-year basis) decreased in January 2026 compared to the same month in the preceding year (i.e., January 2025).
“On a month-on-month basis, the Headline inflation rate in January 2026 was -2.88%, which was 3.42% lower than the rate recorded in December 2025 (0.54%).
“This means that in January 2026, the rate of increase in the average price level was lower than the rate of increase in the average price level in December 2025.”
The statistics bureau also reported that the food inflation rate stood at 8.89 percent year-on-year in January 2026 — 20.74 percentage points lower than the 29.63 percent recorded in December 2025.
On a month-on-month basis, food inflation was -6.02 percent, representing a 5.66 percentage point decline compared to December 2025 (-0.36 percent).
According to the NBS, the decrease was driven by falling average prices of items such as water yam, eggs, green peas, groundnut oil, soya beans, palm oil, maize (corn) grains, guinea corn, beans, beef, melon (egusi), cassava tuber, and white cowpeas.
The average annual rate of food inflation for the 12 months ending January 2026 was 20.29 percent — 18.18 percentage points lower than the 38.47 percent recorded in January 2025.