Nigeria’s Inflation Slows to 23.71% in April 2025

Nigeria’s headline inflation rate eased to 23.71 per cent in April 2025, reflecting a 0.52 percentage point decline from the 24.23 per cent recorded in March.

This was disclosed in the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) Report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday.

The report also showed a decline in the food inflation index by 0.53 per cent to 21.26 percent in April from 21.79 per cent in March.

The decrease was attributed to the reduction in the prices of staple food items, including maize (corn) flour, wheat grain, dried okro, yam flour, soya beans, rice, bambara beans, and brown beans.

According to the NBS: “The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose to 119.52 in April 2025, reflecting a 2.18-point increase from the preceding month.”

“On a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate was 9.99% lower than the rate recorded in April 2024 (33.69 per cent). This indicates a significant decrease compared to the same month in the preceding year, though with a different base year of November 2009 = 100,” it added.

The report further noted that the food inflation rate on a year-on-year basis stood at 21.26 per cent in April 2025, marking a 19.27 per cent reduction from the 40.53 per cent achieved in April 2024. The NBS attributed this sharp decline to a change in the base year used for calculations.

On a month-on-month basis, food inflation was recorded at 2.06 per cent in April 2025, a slight drop of 0.12 per cent from 2.18 per cent in March 2025.

“The decrease can be attributed to the reduction in the average prices of key food items like Maize Flour, Wheat Grain, Okro Dried, Yam Flour, Soya Beans, Rice, Bambara Beans, and Brown Beans,” the report added.

The development increases the chances of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to cut or pause interest rate at its next Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting on May 20.

The MPC of the apex bank has only four months of data to guide its decision after the NBS overhauled the consumer price index for the first time in 16 years in January and changed the base year to 2024.

Business Post reports that at the last meeting, the CBN paused the key interest rate at 27.50 per cent.