Nigeria’s cost-of-living pressures remained elevated across several states in December 2025, even as national inflation moderated following the rebasing of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Nigeria’s headline inflation eased sharply to 15.15% in December 2025, following a methodological review by the National Bureau of Statistics, signalling a significant moderation in price pressures compared with both the previous month and the same period last year.
Data from the latest Consumer Price Index report showed that the CPI rose to 131.2 points in December from 130.5 points in November, indicating a slower pace of increase in average prices across the economy.
On a year-on-year basis, headline inflation fell to 15.15% in December 2025 from 17.33% in November and was far lower than the 34.80% recorded in December 2024. This reflected a sharp deceleration in inflation over the twelve-month period.
Food inflation recorded one of the sharpest improvements, falling to 10.84% year on year from 39.84% in December 2024. On a month-on-month basis, food prices declined by 0.36%, reversing the 1.13% increase recorded in November. The NBS linked the decline to lower prices of staples such as tomatoes, garri, eggs, grains, vegetables, beans, and fresh onions. The twelve-month average food inflation rate stood at 22.00%.
State-level data from the latest CPI report show that non-food inflation, rather than food prices, increasingly defines which states ranked as the most expensive places to live, especially in urban and commercial centres.
Below are the top 10 most expensive states to live in Nigeria in December 2025, according to the latest CPI data from the NBS:
Cross River recorded a 16.9% year-on-year all-items inflation rate, but what stood out in December was the sharp 3.1% month-on-month increase, one of the highest across the states reviewed.
Food inflation stood at 10.7% year on year, while food prices declined by 0.5% month on month, indicating that the December spike was not food-led. Instead, rising transport, housing-related costs and services likely pushed overall prices higher, reinforcing the role of core inflation in driving living costs in the state.
