By: ThinkBusiness Africa
Nigeria’s headline inflation rate continued its downward trajectory in January 2026, easing to 15.10% from 15.15% in December. The marginal decline, reported by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday, underscores a growing sense of macroeconomic resilience as the year begins.
Analysts credited the cooling of prices to a stabilizing exchange rate and improved domestic supply, which helped the economy bypass a widely predicted “base effect” spike that many feared would push the rate toward 19%.
A key driver of the January moderation was the relative stability of the Naira. After years of volatility, the local currency has found a steadier range, reducing the “pass-through” cost of imported goods and services.
Since the beginning of the year, the Naira has traded below N1450 per U.S dollar. The local currency appreciation in the official market, gained roughly 7.8% year-on-year, and helped ease the cost of imported components.
The 15.10% figure was a significant “beat” against market expectations. Many research houses had projected a technical uptick due to the NBS’s recent rebasing of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to a 2024 base year. Instead, a sharp month-on-month contraction of -2.88% (compared to 0.54% in December) helped neutralize these statistical pressures.
According to NBS, food inflation decelerated to 8.89%, supported by fairly strong supply conditions for staples like maize and sorghum.
The Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN)latest Inflation Expectations Survey showed that business owners are becoming increasingly optimistic, with more respondents expecting prices to remain stable or decrease over the next six months.
The data arrives just as the CBN prepares for its first Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting of the year. With inflation trending toward the bank’s year-end target of 12.94%, the narrative is shifting from “aggressive tightening” to “stability maintenance.”
