Nigeria began 2026 with the lowest food inflation reading in more than 14 years. It did not last. The National Bureau of Statistics put year-on-year food inflation at 8.89% in January, then recorded it climbing to 17.52% in June and 20.31% in July. In six months the rate rose by 11.42 percentage points and ended 2.28 times higher than where it started.
A Rare Single-Digit Start
The January figure was a milestone. Nairametrics reported that 8.89% was the lowest level since August 2011 and the first time food inflation had fallen below 10% since May 2015, ending 128 consecutive months of double-digit readings. It came down from 10.84% in December 2025, and NBS credited lower prices for items including water yam, eggs, groundnut oil, palm oil, maize, guinea corn, egusi and cassava tuber.
The reading was produced under the rebased Consumer Price Index, which changed the base year and basket weights. That makes it a cleaner measure of the current basket, but it also means the January figure is not directly comparable with readings from before the rebasing.
The Climb Through Mid-Year
By June the picture had reversed. BusinessDay reported food inflation at 17.52%, up from 16.96% in May, a rise of 0.56 percentage points in a single month. Month on month, food prices rose 3.75% in June against 2.98% in May, which means prices were not only higher than a year earlier but accelerating.
NBS attributed the June increase to price movements in crayfish, fresh pepper, tomatoes, dried green peas, yam flour, water yam, beef, banana, cassava flour, cowpea, garri, Irish potatoes and yam tuber, as BusinessDay reported. The list covers most of the everyday Nigerian kitchen, from soup condiments to tubers and swallow.
July added another 2.79 percentage points, taking the rate to 20.31%, the fifth consecutive monthly rise, according to Nairametrics.
What Drove the Reversal
The January reading reflected strong base effects from the very high food prices of 2024 and 2025. As those base effects faded through the first half of 2026, the year-on-year rate had less room to stay low, and the lean season between harvests added pressure on tubers and vegetables. Several of the items NBS credited for January's fall, water yam among them, reappeared on the June list of items pushing inflation up.
Why It Matters in Lagos
For Lagos households, the jump from 8.89% to 20.31% is the difference between food prices rising modestly and prices rising by roughly a fifth in a year. The rate eased in August, but it remains far above the single-digit level recorded at the start of the year.
FoodPrices Nigeria tracks weekly prices across Lagos markets, giving a street-level check on the direction the official figures report each month.
Live prices: foodprices.ng/real-time-prices