Nigeria’s Inflation Rate Falls to 21.88% in July Despite Rising Food Costs

• Headline inflation dropped to 21.88% in July, marking the fourth disinflation in 2025 and a 0.34% month-on-month decrease

• Food inflation rose to 22.74% in July but remains 16.79% lower than July 2024 due to base year recalculations by NBS

Nigeria’s headline inflation rate fell to 21.88% in July 2025, down from 22.22% in June, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

In its Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released on Friday, the NBS said the drop represents the fourth disinflation recorded in 2025 and a 0.34% decline compared to the previous month. On a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate was 11.52% lower than the 33.40% recorded in July 2024.

“On a year-on-year basis, the Headline inflation rate was 11.52% lower than the rate recorded in July 2024 (33.40%),” NBS said.

“On a month-on-month basis, the Headline inflation rate in July 2025 was 1.99%, which was 0.31% higher than the rate recorded in June 2025 (1.68%).

“This means that in July 2025, the rate of increase in the average price level was higher than the rate of increase in the average price level in June 2025.”

Food Inflation Climbs to 22.74%

Food inflation rose to 22.74% in July 2025 from 21.97% in June. Despite this, the rate was still 16.79% lower than the 39.53% recorded in July 2024. The NBS said the sharp drop compared to last year is largely due to a change in the base year used for calculation.

On a month-on-month basis, food inflation stood at 3.12% in July, down slightly from 3.25% in June. The bureau attributed the decline to falling prices of items such as vegetable oil, white beans, local rice, maize flour, guinea corn, wheat flour, and millet.

The average annual food inflation rate for the 12 months ending July 2025 was 26.97%, which is 9.39 percentage points lower than the 36.36% recorded in July 2024.