Nigeria’s headline inflation rate fell to 23.71% in April 2025, down from 24.23% in March 2025, according to new statistics issued by the National Bureau of Statistics.
This signifies a 0.52 percentage point decrease from last month, suggesting a more gradual increase in the overall price level of goods and services across the country.
The relaxation aligns with a major revision to the Consumer Price Index, following the NBS’s completion of a long-anticipated rebasing of the CPI structure.
The rebasing replaces out-of-date reference periods from 2009, putting the CPI in line with current economic conditions.
According to the Bureau, “Rebasing aligns the price and weight reference periods with the current economic environment, ensuring methodological accuracy, updating the composition of the goods and services basket, revising item weights, and incorporating necessary improvements.”
The newly updated CPI now uses 2024 as the price reference year (base year) and 2023 as the weight reference period.
It covers 934 product varieties across 13 divisions under the international COICOP 2018 classification framework.
The CPI structure now includes a broad range of indices such as the Urban National Index, Rural National Index, Headline Index, Food Index, Core Index, Imported Food Index, Goods Index, Services Index, Energy Index, All Items Less Farm Produce Index, and Farm Produce Index.
This comprehensive design ensures “accurate price tracking across different sectors and regions, supporting economic analysis and policy formulation.”
On a year-on-year basis, April’s headline inflation rate of 23.71% was 9.99 percentage points lower than the 33.69% recorded in April 2024, although that figure was based on the previous CPI base year of 2009.
Month-on-month, the inflation rate in April stood at 1.86%, significantly lower than March’s 3.90%.
“This means that in April 2025, the rate of increase in the average price level is lower than the rate of increase in the average price level in March 2025,” the NBS noted.
The CPI for April stood at 119.52 points, representing a 2.18-point increase from the previous month.
Analysts are closely watching the effects of the rebased CPI framework on future inflation trends and how it will influence monetary and fiscal policy decisions.