Nigeria's inflation eases to 15.91% in June 2026 — but food prices accelerated

Nigeria's headline inflation rate eased to 15.91% year-on-year in June 2026, down from 15.93% in May, according to the Consumer Price Index report the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released on 15 July 2026. It is the first decline after three consecutive monthly increases, and it sits far below the 25.29% recorded in June 2025.

The move is small — two hundredths of a percentage point — and the detail underneath it matters more than the headline.

The relief is in the aggregate, not in food

While the headline rate slipped, food inflation ran at 17.52% year-on-year — above the headline rate — and, more tellingly, its month-on-month pace accelerated to 3.75%, up from 2.98% in May. Food is the one part of the basket that got faster, not slower, in June.

The NBS attributed the increase to higher prices for a specific and familiar list of items: crayfish, fresh pepper, tomatoes, dried green peas, yam flour, water yam, beef, banana, cassava flour, cow pea, garri, Irish potatoes and yam tuber.

That list is where a national percentage stops being useful and item-level prices take over. Opaindex tracks several of the goods NBS names — fresh tomatoes, white garri, yam tuber, boneless beef and local rice — each carrying its own source, asOf date and confidence rating, so readers can see how the aggregate lines up against the price of the actual thing. The May food price watch showed the same pattern taking hold, with tomatoes leading the monthly climb.

Headline momentum did cool

On a month-on-month basis — the better read on current momentum — headline price growth slowed to 1.66%, from 1.75% in May. Core inflation, which strips out volatile farm produce and energy, was 15.92% year-on-year, with its monthly pace easing to 1.66%, from 1.94%. The overall index still rose: the CPI reached 143.0 points in June, up 2.3 points from 140.7 in May.

So June contains two honest, opposing signals: outside food, price pressure is genuinely cooling; inside food, it re-accelerated.

A national average with a 34-point spread

The country-level number conceals how uneven the squeeze is. Annual all-items inflation ranged from 42.23% in Niger State to 19.47% in Imo. For food the spread was wider still — 53.02% in Kogi against 19.15% in Katsina, a gap of nearly 34 percentage points.

The urban–rural split points the same way: urban inflation was 16.08% year-on-year against 15.48% in rural areas, and the monthly gap was starker — 2.13% in towns versus 0.52% in the countryside.

What it means for the CBN

The timing is pointed. The Monetary Policy Committee meets for its 306th session on 20–21 July 2026, days after this release, with the policy rate at 26.5% — the level the CBN held at its May meeting while it waited for evidence that inflation was falling durably. June hands the committee genuinely mixed evidence: a headline rate finally moving the right way and cooling core momentum, set against food prices accelerating month-on-month. Analysts quoted ahead of the meeting expect the MPR to be retained.

For households, the arithmetic is blunter than the policy debate. A headline rate that falls by 0.02 percentage points while food rises 3.75% in a single month is not a fall in prices — it is a slightly slower climb, concentrated away from the part of the basket people buy weekly. That is why the national figure is a starting point rather than an answer: the live, sourced prices Opaindex tracks across Nigeria, alongside the naira, show where the pressure is actually landing, item by item.

This follows May's 15.93% print, which capped three straight monthly increases. The figures above are NBS June 2026 CPI aggregates published on 15 July 2026; the live prices linked throughout carry their own asOf date, source and confidence on each commodity page.