Nigeria’s headline inflation rate declined marginally to 15.06 percent in February 2026 on a year-on-year basis, according to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The figure represents a 0.04 percentage point decrease from the 15.10 percent recorded in January 2026, and a sharp drop from 26.27 percent recorded in February 2025.
The statistics agency noted that the new figures follow the recent CPI rebasing exercise, which adopted 2024 as the base year and 2023 as the reference period for weights. Following the rebasing, the CPI stood at 130.40 in February 2026, reflecting a 2.6-point increase from the preceding month.
On a month-on-month basis, the headline inflation rate in February stood at 2.01 percent, representing a 4.89 percentage point increase compared with –2.88 percent recorded in January 2026.
The report also showed that food inflation stood at 12.12 percent year-on-year in February 2026.
Core inflation, which excludes volatile agricultural produce and energy prices, was recorded at 15.88 percent year-on-year, while on a month-on-month basis it rose to 0.89 percent, compared with –1.69 percent recorded in January.
In terms of location, urban inflation was recorded at 15.53 percent year-on-year, while rural inflation stood at 13.93 percent over the same period.
Across states, Kogi, Benue and Anambra recorded the highest year-on-year all-items inflation rates at 23.57 percent, 22.85 percent and 22.09 percent respectively, while Katsina, Imo and Ebonyi recorded the lowest increases at 7.78 percent, 11.66 percent and 11.71 percent respectively.
The NBS noted that variations in inflation across states are influenced by differences in consumption patterns and expenditure weights used in calculating the CPI.
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