Nigeria’s January 2024 inflation reached a high of 29.9%, near 10o basis point jump from December, at 0.98%. This surge is largely driven by food prices, as food inflation increased by 35.41%, an 11.1% rise year-on-year. The release of the inflation numbers coincided with the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s meeting with all the state governors in Abuja yesterday. The meeting focused on rising insecurity challenges in the country and rising food prices. Both are connected as food supply and production has dwindled on the back of rising insecurity in the country, and food prices compounded by the rising costs of transportation and logistics that followed the removal of fuel subsidy since June 2023. The President released a statement afterwards and said they have instituted a committee to see how the country can improve security through state policing. The president, rightfully, rejected the idea of a price control of food stuffs
Fig. 1: Nigeria’s inflation trajectory.
