October 15, (THEWILL) — Nigeria’s headline inflation rate dropped to 18.02% in September, down from 20.12% in August 2025, the National Bureau of Statistics.(NBS) said in its Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released on Wednesday.
According to the Bureau, the September 2025 headline inflation rate showed a decrease of 2.1% compared to the August 2025 figure.
“In September 2025, the Headline inflation rate eased to 18.02 percent relative to the August 2025 headline inflation rate of 20.12 percent. Looking at the movement, the September 2025 Headline inflation rate showed a decrease of 2.1 percent compared to the August 2025 Headline inflation rate”, the report stated.
“On a year-on-year basis, the Headline inflation rate was 14.68% lower than the 32.7% rate recorded in September 2024. This shows that the Headline inflation rate (year-on-year basis) decreased in September 2025 compared to the same month in the preceding year (i.e., September 2024), though with a different base year, November 2009 = 100”, the Bureau added.
However, on a month-on-month basis, the Headline inflation rate in September 2025 was 0.72%, which was 0.02 percent lower than the 0.74% rate recorded in August 2025. “This means that in September 2025, the rate of increase in the average price level was lower than the rate of increase in the average price level in August 2025”, the Bureau clarified.
On its report on food inflation, the Bureau said inflation dropped by 5.0% to 16.87% in September, compared to 21.87% recorded in August 2025, attributing the development to a drop in average prices of maize grains, garri, beans, millet, potatoes, onions, eggs, tomatoes, fresh pepper, etc.
The Bureau, however, observed that food inflation on a Year-on-Year (YoY) basis was highest in Ekiti (28.68%) and Rivers (24.18%), Nasarawa (22.74%), while Bauchi (2.81%), Niger (8.38%), and Anambra (8.41%) had the slowest rise in food inflation YoY.
“The Food inflation rate in September 2025 was 16.87 percent on a year-on-year basis.This was 20.9 percentage points lower compared to the rate recorded in September 2024 (37.77 percent). The significant decline in the annual food inflation figure is technically due to the change in the base year.
“However, on a month-on-month basis, the Food inflation rate in September 2025 was -1.57 percent, down by 3.22 percent compared to August 2025 (1.65 percent). The decrease can be attributed to the rate of decrease in the average prices of maize (corn) grains, garri, beans, millet, potatoes, onions, eggs, tomatoes, fresh pepper etc”, the report stated.
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