For the tenth consecutive time since President Bola Tinubu assumed office in May 2023, Nigeria’s headline inflation rose to 33.2 per cent in March 2024.
Additional findings showed that the inflation rate is the highest the nation has recorded since March 1996.
Tinubu, upon his assumption into office, met the inflation rate at 22.41 per cent. The new figures show that the president’s policies have increased the rate by 10.79 per cent within his first ten months in office.
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The last time Nigeria’s inflation rate dropped was December 2022, when the figure fell from 21.47 per cent in November to 21.34 per cent in December 2022. However, since December 2022, the country’s inflation rate has spiked.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the March inflation rate increased by 1.50 per cent when compared to 31.70 per cent reported by the bureau in the preceding month, February 2024.
The NBS data showed that the rising inflation rate was majorly driven by food and non-alcoholic beverages, the cost of housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuel, as well as the prices of clothes and transportation.
The increase is coming despite several palliative measures and interventions by the president to alleviate the prices of goods and transport after the removal of the fuel subsidy in May 2023.
NBS said that the urban inflation rate was 35.18 per cent, which was 12.11 per cent points higher compared to the 23.07 per cent recorded in March 2023. Also, the rural inflation rate in March 2024 was 31.45 per cent on a year-on-year basis; this was 10.37 per cent higher compared to the 21.09 per cent recorded in March 2023.
Meanwhile, the food inflation rate for the month under review in March 2024 was 40.01 per cent. This was driven by increases in prices of the following items garri, millet, akpu uncooked fermented (which are under the bread and cereals class), yam tuber, water yam (under the potatoes, yam, and other tubers class), dried fish sardine, mudfish dried (under fish class), palm oil, vegetable oil (under oil and fat), beef feet, beef head, liver (under meat class), coconut, watermelon (under fruit class), Lipton tea, bournvita, milo (under coffee, tea and cocoa class).
“The government is concentrating more on naira appreciation against the dollar. It’s not enough. Inflation is highly triggered by high energy prices and high costs of doing business. It is still a problem. Naira is appreciating against the dollar, and the cost of doing business and high interest rates are affecting commodity prices,” a development economist and consultant to The British Department of International Development (DFID) Celestine Okeke, told The ICIR.
Also, a Development Economist, Kalu Aja, speaking on the development, said the high costs of doing business were affecting the rise in inflation despite the naira’s appreciation against the dollar.
“When we are celebrating the Naira appreciation, the cost of doing business in Nigeria’s still very high. You see why prices of goods are not coming down. There is epileptic power and you see people pay high costs to run their business. These are factors pushing up commodity prices and inflation,” Kalu said.
Kehinde Ogunyale tells stories by using data to hold power into account. You can send him a mail at jameskennyogunyale@gmail or Twitter: Prof_KennyJames | LinkedIn: Kehinde Ogunyale
Harrison Edeh is a journalist with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, always determined to drive advocacy for good governance through holding public officials and businesses accountable.