Nigeria’s inflation rate rose to 15.15 per cent in December 2025 from 14.45 per cent in November, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) stated in the official data issued on Thursday.
On a year-on-year basis, the NBS said the December headline inflation rate was 19.65 per cent lower than the rate recorded in December 2024 (34.80 per cent).
“This shows that the headline inflation rate (year-on-year basis) decreased in December 2025 compared to the same month in the preceding year (i.e., December 2024), though with a different base year, November 2009 = 100,” the bureau said.
On a month-on-month basis, the NBS said 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).
This, it said, means that in December 2025, the rate of increase in the average price level was lower than in November 2025.
Food inflation
According to the report, the food inflation rate in December 2025 stood at 10.84 per cent on a year-on-year basis from 39.84 per cent in December 2024.
On a month-on-month basis, the NBS said the food inflation rate declined to -0.36 per cent, down by 1.49 per cent compared to November 2025 (1.13 per cent).
“This decline can be attributed to the rate of decrease in the average prices in the following food items, namely, tomatoes, garri, eggs, potatoes, carrots, millet, vegetables, plantain, beans, wheat grain, grounded pepper, onions (fresh), etc.”
The bureau explained that the average annual rate of food inflation for the twelve months ending December 2025, relative to the previous twelve-month average, stood at 22.00 per cent.
Core inflation, which excludes the prices of volatile items such as energy and farm produce, stood at 18.63 per cent in December 2025 on a year-on-year basis from 29.28 per cent in December 2024, while on a month-on-month basis, the Core Inflation rate was 0.58 per cent, down by 0.7 per cent compared to November 2025 (1.28 per cent).
“The average twelve-month annual inflation rate stood at 23.49 per cent for the twelve months ending December 2025,” the NBS said.
The NBS explained that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose to 131.2 in December 2025, up by 0.7 points from the previous month (130.5).
In December 2025, the bureau said food inflation on a year-on-year basis was highest in Yobe (15.25 per cent), Ogun (14.12 per cent), and Abuja (13.24 per cent), while Akwa Ibom (4.34 per cent), Sokoto (4.62 per cent), and Plateau (6.19 per cent) recorded the slowest rise.
“On a month-on-month basis, however, December 2025 food inflation was highest in Imo (3.19 per cent), Nasarawa (3.16 per cent), and Yobe (1.18 per cent), while Plateau (-2.76 per cent), Rivers (-2.50 per cent), and Zamfara (-1.93 per cent) recorded a decline in food inflation on a month-on-month basis,” it added.
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According to the bureau, the December 2025 year-on-year headline inflation rate, including all other sub-indexes, was obtained through 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, it said, is a departure from the single-month index reference period, in which December 2024 was set to 100, which would have produced an artificial spike in the December 2025 year-on-year inflation rate.
“This artificial spike is induced by the base effect, which is methodological, not structural, resulting in a rate that is not in tandem with current inflationary realities; hence the need to resort to the 12-month index reference period, by equating the entire 2024 to 100.
“This definitely affects the raising factor used for the re-referencing of the 2024 CPI series and the already released year-on-year inflation rates for January to November 2025,” it said.
