Nigeria’s inflation rate slowed to 15.15% in December 2025, up from 17.33% in November 2025, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported on Thursday.
The Bureau, in its ‘Consumer Price Index December 2025’, clarified that the December general price level in the economy was calculated using a new rebased CPI with a base year of 2024 and a weight reference period of 2023.
On a year-on-year basis, the Bureau reported that the December Headline inflation rate was 19.65% lower than the 34.80% rate recorded in December 2024, though with a different base year, November 2009 = 100.
According to the statistics agency, the sub-indexes of the CPI were derived using a 12-month reference period, where the average CPI for all twelve months of 2024 is set to 100.
It clarified: “This differs from the single-month index method, where December 2024 alone is set to 100.”
The data reflected that the CPI rose to 131.2 basis points in the month under review, reflecting a 0.7-point increase from November 2025 and the Bureau primarily attributed the increase in the headline inflation to rises in food and non-alcoholic beverages prices.
When analyzed on a month-on-month basis, the headline inflation was 0.54% in December 2025, down from 1.22% in November 2025.
On a year-on-year basis, in December 2025 the NBS reported that the Urban inflation rate slowed to 14.85% from 37.29% in December 2024 while on a month-on-month basis, the inflation rate rose to 0.99%, up by 0.03% from 0.95% recorded in the preceding month and that the corresponding twelve-month average for the Urban inflation rate was 23.46%.
Also, the CPI data showed that the Rural inflation rate in the month under review dropped to14.56% on a year-on-year basis from 32.47% in December 2024 but on a month-on-month basis, the rate declined to -0.55%, down by 2.43% compared to 1.88% recorded n November 2025. The corresponding twelve-month average for the Rural inflation rate in December 2025 was 21.93%.
The data further showed that in the month under review, Food inflation stood at 10.84% year-on-year, while the month-on-month food inflation rate recorded -0.36%, a decrease from 1.13% in November 2025, which the Bureau attributed to falling prices of tomatoes, garri, eggs, potatoes, carrots, millet, vegetables, plantain, beans, wheat grain, ground pepper, and onions.
This is even as it reported that Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose 18.63% year-on-year in December 2025, while month-on-month core inflation was 0.58%, down from 1.28% in November 2025.
The CPI data indicated that inflation trends varied across states and that on a year-on-year basis, the highest headline inflation rates were recorded in Abia (19.03%), Ogun (18.80%), and Katsina (18.66%), while Sokoto (8.61%), Plateau (9.05%), and Kaduna (10.38%) recorded the lowest increases.
However, on a month-on-month analysis, Cross River (3.11%), Abia (2.63%), and Delta (2.53%) recorded the highest rises, whereas Ondo (-3.74%), Gombe (-3.02%), and Jigawa (-1.96%) experienced decline in their general price levels in December 2025.
The statistics agency reported that for food inflation year-on-year, the highest rates were recorded in Yobe (15.25%), Ogun (14.12%), and Abuja (13.24%), while Akwa Ibom (4.34%), Sokoto (4.62%), and Plateau (6.19%) recorded the slowest increases.
On a month-on-month basis, the CPI data indicated that Imo (3.19%), Nasarawa (3.16%), and Yobe (1.18%) had the highest food inflation, while Plateau (-2.76%), Rivers (-2.50%), and Zamfara (-1.93%) eases.