Yemi Kale, group chief economist at the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) and the architect of Nigeria’s 2014 GDP rebasing, has warned that the recent overhaul of the country’s inflation data may be fundamentally flawed, potentially obscuring the true cost-of-living crisis facing Africa’s most populous nation.
During the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry LCCI economic outlook in Lagos, Kale, who served as Nigeria’s statistician-general for a decade, suggested that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) may have “rushed” the transition to a new Consumer Price Index (CPI) framework.
The rebasing, which shifted the base year from 2009 to 2024, saw headline inflation technically plummet from over 34 percent to 15 percent, a drop that many Nigerians find difficult to reconcile with market prices.
“I think all the comments on the CPI and the true consistency are valid. I just assumed that some things were rushed. I don’t know why,” he said.
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The crux of Kale’s argument is the technical continuity of inflation tracking. Standard statistical practice would require aligning new and old figures over a 12-month window to ensure they are functional. By declaring previous numbers non-comparable while simultaneously launching a new 2025 series, the NBS has created a vacuum for year-on-year analysis.
“How do you calculate year-on-year when you say the previous numbers are not comparable?” Kale questioned. “There are some questions that need to be answered regarding the CPI.”
Today, the NBS released the headline inflation rate for December 2025 which was officially put at 15.15 percent. The NBS admitted that without a specific methodological adjustment, the inflation rate today would have appeared to “spike” to 31.2 percent due to the rebasing.
To prevent this, Adeyemi Adeniran, the statistician-general, announced that the bureau moved away from using a single month of December 2024 as the base. Instead, they used a 12-month average of 2024 as the reference point.
Kale urged the government to abandon its defensive stance and instead listen to independent economic experts to fix structural errors to reflect economic realities.
“Mistakes can be made and as long as you’re ready to fix errors and listen to experts, that’s what matters, not the defensive posture, its getting actual data,” Kale said.