National Bureau of Statistics saysNigeria’s headline inflation rate declined marginally to 15.06 per cent in February.
The NBS report noted that the February figure represents a 0.04 percentage point decrease compared with the 15.10 per cent recorded in January 2026.
On a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate was 11.21 percentage points lower than the 26.27 per cent recorded in February 2025.
“This shows that the headline inflation rate on a year-on-year basis decreased in February 2026 compared with the same month in the preceding year (February 2025),” the report stated.
But the NBS said the rate of change in the general price level increased on a month-on-month basis when compared with January.
“The headline inflation rate in February 2026 was 2.01 per cent on a month-on-month basis, which was 4.89 percentage points higher than the rate recorded in January 2026 (-2.88 per cent). This indicates that the rate of increase in the average price level in February was higher than that recorded in January,” the report explained.
On food prices, the report stated that food inflation stood at 12.12 per cent on a year-on-year basis.
“This was 14.86 percentage points lower than the rate recorded in February 2025, which was 26.98 per cent,” the report said.
However, on a month-on-month basis, food inflation rose to 4.69 per cent in February 2026, representing an increase of 10.70 percentage points compared with -6.02 per cent recorded in January 2026.
NBS said the increase was driven by rising prices of several food items, including beans, carrots, okazi leaves, cassava tubers, crayfish, millet flour, yam flour, snails, dried ogbono (apon), and cowpeas, among others.
NBS also reported that the average annual rate of food inflation for the 12 months ending February 2026 was 19.08 per cent, representing a decline of 18.31 percentage points compared with the 37.40 per cent recorded in February 2025.
