By Bashir Olanrewaju
Prices continued to surge in Nigeria in January as the consumer price index shot up to 16.47 percent from the previous year on the wings of food inflation that reached 20.57 percent in the same month.
Month-on-month increases for the two measures stood 1.49 percent for headline inflation and 1.83 percent for food inflation, according to data released on Tuesday by the National Bureau of Statistics.
“The average annual rate of change of the food sub-index for the twelve-month period ending January 2021 over the previous twelve-month average was 16.66 percent, 0.49 percent points higher than the average annual rate of change recorded in December,” the statistics bureau said.
The latest inflation figures leave the Central Bank of Nigeria further adrift of its target to keep inflation within the band of 6 percent to 9 percent, which it hasn’t met for more than five years.
Food growing areas in parts of the central region and large swathes of the north have experienced worsening insecurity, affecting not only the production of food but also its distribution.