Many thoughts went into coming up with Nigeria’s latest inflation figures pegged at precisely 24.48 percent high by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) as recent social media enlightening posts by the agency have shown, yet it remains too much of all a tall order for the common people to believe.

Newly digesting the announcement, there has been the feeling that the NBS data do not match with the reality they live in, whether reviewing the food prices or the extremely pricey energy services. Nigerians need these two for their survival but they ever remain high, more than what the burdens were pre-mid-2023.

This is why puzzled observers are all climaxing at the question: What was the thinking in the NBS inner circle before the new 24.48 percent inflation value was realised?

The information department, which was established via a merger of the Federal Office of Statistics (FOS) and the National Data Bank (NDB) in 2004, is the main setup recognised to perform any act regarding measuring the temperature of Africa’s most populous country Nigeria when it comes to how the people buy for their survival.

Measuring the temperature is simply knowing how households are feeling; whether their pockets remain dry because of low purchasing power driven by past consistent rise in inflation or if they are staying afloat.

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The monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) report since President Bola Tinubu ended an energy industry subsidies regime mostly shows consistently rising inflation numbers like in December when it was 34.80 percent.

A fitting explanation for the drastic easing by 10.32 percent less than 2024 Christmas obviously must be fully packed and that critical advice is what the National Bureau of Statistics possibly hopes it has been giving, with its targeted information dissemination since this week started.

There had been a couple of presenters from the NBS putting themselves in front of a camera for quick takes that turned into clips that an audience could consume to stay informed. If not, the disbelief won’t go away it seems, but people aren’t necessarily convinced.

What the data really shows

The inflation rate, according to the agency, was 24.48 percent year-on-year, a decrease from 34.8 percent in December 2024.

This, says the NBS, was due to a long overdue rebasing of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). It was five years after the agency was established that the price index was last rebased, blaming this in the report on scarce resources but that problem now seems to have been resolved.

What that meant was that the base year was moved closer to the current period, from 2009 to 2024.

Now that the process has been completed, it has changed the basket of goods and services used to calculate inflation.

The methodology for calculating inflation was refined, including the adoption of the Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP) 2018 international framework developed by the United Nations Statistics Division. This instrument is used to categorise household spending by purpose, hence how the inflation rate came about.

NBS, with the January inflation rate, notes that farm produce and energy weren’t added because these two represent rare goods. That is, the items households may need for their sustenance but do not buy daily.

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Up to 10,000 markets across Nigeria’s 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory (FCT) were covered as a mechanism for capturing data from the source.

What is causing the disbelief?

Nigeria’s inflation rate, says the statistics agency for January 2024 stood at 24.48 percent year-on-year.

Food Inflation rate stood at 26.08%

Core Inflation rate stood at 22.59%

Urban Inflation rate stood at 26.09%

Rural Inflation rate stood at 22.15%

Special indices introduced and their inflation rates. (Base Period: 2024 = 100)

Farm Produce – 10.50%

All items less farm produce- 10.70%

Energy index  – 8.9%

Services Index – 10.41%

Imported food index – 11.47%

[Note: the rates reported for the new indices are for January 2025 compared to the base year.]

Back to the markets, the price of a 50kg bag of rice has been reported to be around the range of ₦80,000 outstrips the current minimum wage of ₦70,000 for federal workers.

These workers have family members, expectant loved ones to support and reactions to the positive appreciation of the country’s inflation figures for 2025 January – negative as it may seem – could be their voices.

NBS… We must not adopt a methodology that reflects international best practices but emasculates the peculiarity of local events, on the X platform, ThaMVP writes. The data is detached from the Nigerian reality and would lead to suboptimal decision-making.

A different user Tunde who goes by the handle Lomon_ tweeted a suspicious eyebrow at President Bola Tinubu’s administration when he wrote: As all statistical indices aren’t pointing in the right direction, Tinubu remembered a popular Yorùbá saying; “ọnàkan o wọ́’já. He ordered rebasing employment indices, now he has rebased the CPI. Now the govt is publishing figures Nigerians can’t relate to.

On the side of the executive, that is, the President of Nigeria’s office, the information and strategy team are taking the January inflation rate onboard nonetheless.

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Ayodele Johnson

Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.