Yemi Kale, Nigeria’s former Statistician-General, has cautioned that the recent overhaul of Nigeria’s inflation data may be masking the true severity of the country’s cost-of-living crisis, raising concerns about the credibility of official figures.
Kale, now Group Chief Economist at Afreximbank and the architect of Nigeria’s landmark 2014 GDP rebasing, made the remarks during the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) Economic Outlook in Lagos.
He suggested that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) may have rushed the transition to a new Consumer Price Index (CPI) framework, warning that key statistical principles may not have been fully observed.
The rebasing shifted Nigeria’s CPI base year from 2009 to 2024, a move that caused headline inflation to drop sharply from over 34 per cent to about 15 per cent, a decline many Nigerians say does not reflect realities in markets and households.
“I think all the comments on the CPI and the true consistency are valid,” Kale said. “I just assumed that some things were rushed. I don’t know why.”
Kale’s core concern centres on the lack of continuity between the old and new inflation series. Standard statistical practice, he noted, requires overlapping old and new data for at least 12 months to ensure meaningful year-on-year comparisons.
By declaring the previous inflation figures non-comparable while simultaneously launching a new 2025 CPI series, Kale argued that the NBS has made it difficult to properly assess inflation trends.
“How do you calculate year-on-year when you say the previous numbers are not comparable?” he asked. “There are some questions that need to be answered regarding the CPI.”
The warning comes as the NBS announced a headline inflation rate of 15.15 per cent for December 2025. The bureau acknowledged that without a methodological adjustment, inflation would have appeared to jump to 31.2 per cent following the rebasing exercise.
To avoid this, the Statistician-General, Adeyemi Adeniran, explained that the bureau abandoned the use of a single base month and instead adopted a 12-month average of 2024 as the reference point.
Kale urged the government and the statistics agency to avoid defensiveness and instead engage independent experts to correct any flaws and restore confidence in the data.
“Mistakes can be made,” he said. “As long as you’re ready to fix errors and listen to experts, that’s what matters—not a defensive posture, but getting data that truly reflects economic reality.”
His remarks add to the growing debate over whether Nigeria’s revised inflation figures accurately capture the everyday pressures facing households, despite the sharp statistical drop.
