Olushola Omogbehin
Nigeria’s inflation rate eased by 2.1 percentage points to 18.02 percent in September 2025 from 20.12 percent in August 2025, marking the 6th consecutive month of decline since April 2025.
The National Bureau of Statistics revealed this on Wednesday in its Consumer Price Index, CPI, Report for September 2025 and it marked the first time in three years that inflation will fall below the 20 per cent threshold.
“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.
“In addition, on a year-on-year basis, the Headline inflation rate was 14.68% lower than the rate recorded in September 2024 (32.7 percent).
“ 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.
“However, on a month-on-month basis, the Headline inflation rate in September 2025 was 0.72 percent, which was 0.02 percent lower than the rate recorded in August 2025 (0.74 percent).
“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.”
According to NBC, the rate of food inflation in September 2025 was 16.87 per cent on a year-on-year basis. This was 20.9 percentage points lower compared to the rate recorded in September 2024 (37.77 per cent).
“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 per cent, down by 3.22 per cent compared to August 2025 (1.65 per cent). 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.”
NBS also reports that food inflation on a Year-on-Year (YoY) basis was highest in Ekiti (28.68%), Rivers (24.18%) and Nasarawa (22.74%), while the states with slowest rise in food inflation include Bauchi (2.81%), Niger (8.38%) and Anambra (8.41%).
Urban inflation inched up month-on-month by 0.25 per cent to 0.74 per cent from 0.49 per cent in August. However, on a year-on-year basis, it stood at 17.50 per cent, which is about 17.63 percentage points lower compared to September 2024.
In September 2025, rural inflation rate dipped on a yearly and monthly basis. It stood at 18.26 per cent (yearly) and 0.67 per cent (monthly).
