Nigeria’s headline inflation rate fell to 20.12 per cent in August, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has reported.

The figure, released on Monday in Abuja in the bureau’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Inflation Report for August 2025, marked a decline of 1.76 percentage points from 21.88 per cent recorded in July.

On a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate was 12.03 percentage points lower than the 32.15 per cent recorded in August 2024.

Month-on-month inflation in August stood at 0.74 per cent, down by 1.25 percentage points from 1.99 per cent in July. “This means that the rate of increase in average price levels was slower in August compared to July,” the report explained.

The NBS said the rise in August’s headline index was driven mainly by increases in food and non-alcoholic beverages (8.05 per cent), restaurants and accommodation services (2.60 per cent), and transport (2.15 per cent). Recreation, sport, and culture (0.06 per cent), alcoholic beverages and tobacco (0.07 per cent), and insurance and financial services (0.09 per cent) were the least contributors.

Food inflation fell sharply to 21.87 per cent in August on a year-on-year basis, down from 37.52 per cent a year earlier, largely due to the change in the CPI base year. Month-on-month food inflation was 1.65 per cent, down from 3.12 per cent in July, driven by falling prices of rice (local and imported), guinea corn, maize flour, semolina, and soya milk.

Core inflation, which excludes volatile agricultural produce and energy, stood at 20.33 per cent year-on-year in August. On a month-on-month basis, it rose to 1.43 per cent from 0.97 per cent in July.

The report showed urban inflation at 19.75 per cent year-on-year and 0.49 per cent month-on-month, while rural inflation stood at 20.28 per cent and 1.38 per cent respectively.

By states, year-on-year headline inflation was highest in Ekiti (28.17 per cent), Kano (27.27 per cent), and Oyo (26.58 per cent), and lowest in Zamfara (11.82 per cent), Anambra (14.16 per cent), and Enugu (14.20 per cent).

On month-on-month basis, Yobe (9.20 per cent), Katsina (8.59 per cent), and Sokoto (6.57 per cent) recorded the highest inflation, while Enugu (-5.32 per cent), Taraba (-3.64 per cent), and Nasarawa (-3.56 per cent) saw the lowest.

Food inflation by states showed Borno (36.67 per cent), Kano (30.44 per cent), and Akwa Ibom (29.85 per cent) as highest year-on-year, while Zamfara (3.20 per cent), Yobe (3.60 per cent), and Sokoto (6.34 per cent) recorded the lowest.

On a month-on-month basis, food inflation was highest in Kaduna (9.37 per cent), Katsina (9.05 per cent), and Akwa Ibom (7.87 per cent), while Bayelsa (-9.52 per cent), Sokoto (-8.92 per cent), and Borno (-8.74 per cent) recorded the lowest.

The NBS noted that following the rebasing of the CPI from 2009 to 2024, with 2023 as the reference period for expenditure weights, the index rose to 126.8 points in August from 125.9 in July.