NIGERIA’s year-on-year inflation rate stood at 15.15 per cent in December, relative to the November 2025 headline inflation rate of 17.33 per cent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report has shown.
The report, released by the statistics office on Thursday, January 15, showed that the December headline inflation rate was 19.65 per cent lower year on year than the rate recorded in December 2024 (34.80 per cent).
The Statistician-General of the Federation, Adeyemi Adeniran, said that following the completion of the recent rebasing exercise, the CPI report was centred on a new CPI base year of 2024 and a weight reference period of 2023.
It further revealed that the headline inflation rate (year-on-year basis) decreased in December 2025 compared to the same month in the preceding year.
On a month-on-month basis, the headline inflation rate in December 2025 was 0.54 per cent, which is 0.69 per cent less than the rate recorded in November 2025 (1.22 per cent).
Accordingly, this means that in December 2025, the rate of increase in the average price level was lower than in November 2025.
“At the divisional level, the three major contributors to the headline inflation were food and non-alcoholic beverages: 6.06 per cent, restaurants & accommodation services: 1.96 per cent, and transport: 1.62 per cent; while the least contributors were recreation, sport, and culture: 0.05 per cent, alcoholic beverages, tobacco, and narcotics: 0.05 per cent, and insurance and financial services: 0.07,” the statistics office said.
The report also showed that the food inflation rate in December 2025 was 10.84 per cent on a year-on-year basis, while on a month-on-month basis, the food inflation rate in December 2025 was -0.36 per cent, down by 1.49 per cent compared to November 2025 (1.13 per cent).
The decrease, the statistics office said, could be attributed to the rate of decrease in the average prices of tomatoes, garri, eggs, potatoes, carrots, millet, vegetables, plantain, beans, wheat grain, grounded pepper, onions, among others.
Additionally, core inflation, which excludes the prices of volatile agricultural produce and energy, stood at 18.63 per cent in December 2025 on a year-on-year basis. On a month-on-month basis, the core inflation rate was 0.58 per cent in December 2025.
The inflation rate of the sub-indices for December 2025 shows that only energy increased significantly (2.74 per cent), while other indices decreased, for example, farm produce (-0.41 per cent), services (0.15 per cent) and goods (0.64 per cent).
Adeniran also explained that the December 2025 year-on-year headline inflation rate, including all other sub-indexes were obtained through the maximisation of the index reference period, that is, using a 12-month index reference period where the average CPI for the 12 months of 2024 is equated to 100.
” This is not the same as the single-month index reference period, in which December 2024 was set to 100,” he said.
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.