Nigeria’s headline inflation continued its downward trajectory in October, easing to 16.05%, according to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released on Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The Bureau noted that the figure represents a notable drop from the 18.02% recorded in September. On a year-on-year basis, inflation stood at 17.82 percentage points lower than the 33.88% posted in October 2024 — a reflection of the impact of the newly adopted CPI base year.
The NBS explained that October’s month-on-month inflation rate was 0.93%, slightly higher than the 0.72% recorded in September. “This means that in October 2025, the rate of increase in the average price level was higher than the rate of increase in the average price level in September 2025,” the report stated.
According to the data, the rise in the general price level for the month was driven largely by increases in several divisions of the CPI basket. Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages remained the biggest contributor at 6.42%, followed by Restaurants and Accommodation Services (2.07%) and Transport (1.71%). Recreation, Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, and Insurance recorded the smallest contributions.
Food inflation also moderated significantly. The annual rate dropped to 13.12%, a sharp fall of 26.04 percentage points from the 39.16% reported in October 2024.
The NBS attributed this steep decline to the CPI rebasing exercise. On a month-to-month basis, food inflation moved to -0.37%, improving by 1.27% from the -1.57% seen in September.
The increase in food prices for the month was linked to items such as fresh onions, oranges, pineapples, shrimp, unshelled groundnuts, vegetables like ugu and okazi, and meats including goat meat, cow tail, and liver.
Core inflation — which excludes volatile agricultural products and energy — stood at 18.69% year-on-year. Month-on-month core inflation eased slightly to 1.416%, compared to 1.417% in September.
Urban inflation for October was 15.65% year-on-year, while rural inflation came in at 15.86%. Monthly, urban inflation climbed to 1.14%, whereas rural inflation dropped to 0.45%.
State-by-state inflation figures showed Ekiti leading with 20.14%, followed by Nasarawa (18.97%) and Zamfara (18.81%). Bauchi recorded the slowest rise at 9.99%, ahead of Anambra (11.72%) and Gombe (11.73%). On a month-on-month basis, Niger and Anambra topped the list at 4.90%, with Edo posting the steepest decline at -4.00%.
For food inflation, Ogun was highest at 20.85%, followed by Nasarawa (19.96%) and Ekiti (19.70%). Akwa Ibom, Katsina, and Yobe posted the lowest annual food inflation figures. Monthly food inflation was highest in Bauchi (6.77%) and lowest in Katsina (-7.72%).
Following the recent CPI rebasing — which updated the base year from 2009 to 2024 and adopted 2023 as the expenditure reference year — the CPI rose to 128.9 in October, up from 127.7 in September.
