Nigeria’s inflation trajectory took a dramatic turn in November 2025 as the headline rate slid to 14.45 per cent, its lowest level in five years, underscoring a sustained slowdown in price pressures and allowing the Federal Government to beat its end-of-year target ahead of schedule.
The latest figure, released on Monday, December 15, 2025, by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in its Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, represents a notable drop from the 16.05 percent recorded in October 2025 and confirms an eighth consecutive monthly decline in inflation this year.
The NBS noted that the November reading effectively rolls inflation back to levels last experienced during the COVID-19 era, when headline inflation hovered around the 14 per cent band in late 2020.
On a year-on-year basis, the statistics agency said the November 2025 headline inflation rate was 20.15 percentage points lower than the 34.60 per cent posted in November 2024, signalling a sharp deceleration in overall price growth.
“This indicates that the headline inflation rate declined in November 2025 when compared with the corresponding month of the previous year,” the bureau stated.
However, the report also revealed a mild uptick in monthly price movements. Inflation on a month-on-month basis rose to 1.22 per cent, up from 0.93 per cent in October, suggesting that while inflation is easing in annual terms, short-term price pressures remain.
“This implies that the pace of increase in the average price level in November 2025 was higher than that recorded in the preceding month,” the NBS explained.
Food inflation, a major driver of household costs, also cooled significantly on an annual basis. The NBS put food inflation at 11.08 per cent year-on-year in November 2025, a steep 28.85 percentage-point drop from the 39.93 per cent recorded in November 2024, attributing much of the decline to the adoption of a revised base year.
Despite the moderation, the bureau reported persistent price increases in key staples, including dried tomatoes, cassava tubers, ground pepper, eggs, crayfish, oxtail, fresh onions, shelled periwinkle and unshelled melon (egusi).
Meanwhile, core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, stood at 18.04 per cent year-on-year, highlighting lingering cost pressures in non-food segments of the economy.
The November outcome marks a significant milestone for the Bola Tinubu administration. While presenting the 2025 Appropriation Bill to a joint session of the National Assembly in December 2024, the President had vowed to rein in inflation from 34.6 per cent to 15 per cent by the end of 2025.
“The 2025 budget projects that inflation will decline significantly from the current 34.6 per cent to 15 per cent by the end of next year,” Tinubu had said.
With inflation now at 14.45 per cent, the government has not only fulfilled that promise but edged past it, even as the month-on-month data suggest that the fight against rising prices is far from over.
