Nigeria’s Inflation Shoots to 31.70% in February

The National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, has released the latest CPI and inflation report on Friday, showing that inflation rate rose to 31.70% in February. 

This went up from 29.90% headline inflation rate in January 2024. In the full report, The NBS says:

“On a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate was 9.79% points higher compared to the rate recorded in February 2023, which was 21.91%. This shows that the headline inflation rate (year-on-year basis) increased in the month of February 2024 when compared to the same month in the preceding year (i.e., February 2023). Furthermore, on a month-on-month basis, the headline inflation rate in February 2024 was 3.12%, which was 0.48% higher than the rate recorded in January 2024 (2.64%). This means that in February 2024, the rate of increase in the average price level is more than the rate of increase in the average price level in January 2024.”

As reports show Nigerians spend large portion of disposable income on food, a worrying statistic from the NBS’s latest report is that food inflation soared to rate soared to 37.92% year-on-year, in February. 

This is a significant 13.57 percentage point increase from February 2023’s rate of 24.35%.

Meanwhile, Food inflation rate in February 2024 was 3.79% on a month-on-month basis, which was 0.58% higher compared to the rate recorded in January 2024 (3.21%).