Nigeria’s September inflation release contains two different countries. Food inflation was 34.4 percent in Lagos, 33.79 percent in Imo and 31.49 percent in Ondo, and negative in Taraba, at minus 7.47 percent, and in Yobe at minus 0.37 percent, with Borno at 2.18 percent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics figures reported by BusinessDay. The national food rate was 19.59 percent, down from 20.16 percent a year earlier on the bureau’s comparison, and 4.96 percentage points above headline inflation of 14.63 percent.
Monthly movements were as divergent as the annual rates. Food prices rose 5.15 percent in September in Imo and 4.46 percent in Ondo, and fell 13.84 percent in Adamawa, 11.01 percent in Kano and 10.21 percent in Bauchi. Nationally, food inflation fell 1.55 percent on the month after rising 1.02 percent in August, on lower average prices for items including local rice, maize flour, eggs, fresh onions and palm oil. The average annual food inflation rate over the 12 months to September was 15.72 percent, down from 28.37 percent in the corresponding period a year earlier.
Muda Yusuf of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, in a brief on the report, attributed the persistence of high food inflation to insecurity, inadequate rural infrastructure, high logistics costs, post-harvest losses and weak market connectivity, and argued for supply-side intervention rather than monetary tightening alone. The bureau itself cautions that state figures are not directly comparable as affordability measures, because consumption baskets and weights differ by state.