Nigeria’s inflation largely structural than monetary — CPPE

The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) has declared that Nigeria’s ongoing inflation challenge is predominantly structural rather than monetary, urging the government to pivot its focus away from further interest rate hikes.

Reacting to the June 2026 inflation figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the policy think-tank argued that the current economic realities require aggressive fiscal and supply-side interventions.

The June report showed a marginal easing of headline inflation to 15.91% from 15.93% in May, signaling a broad stabilization. However, this positive plateau was shadowed by a sharp and concerning acceleration in food prices, with month-on-month food inflation jumping to 3.75% from 2.98%.

According to Dr. Muda Yusuf, the Chief Executive Officer of the CPPE, this divergence proves that traditional monetary instruments have exhausted their efficacy in curbing Nigeria’s cost-of-living crisis.

Dr. Yusuf noted that the persistent drivers of the country’s inflation specifically across food, transportation, housing, and energy are elements that the Central Bank of Nigeria’s monetary policies simply cannot resolve.

Instead, the CPPE has called on the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to maintain its current stance at its next meeting, warning that additional tightening would only choke off domestic investment without taming cost-push inflation.

The think-tank attributed the stubbornness of food prices directly to supply-side constraints. Chief among these is the escalating security crisis in key agricultural regions, which has displaced farming populations and driven them into urban areas.

This rural-to-urban migration has subsequently strained urban infrastructure, pushing urban inflation to 16.08% surpassing the national average.

Other key culprits fueling the price hikes include high transportation and logistics costs, elevated energy prices, expensive fertilizers, and global supply chain disruptions.

Noting these factors account for approximately 72 percent of the country’s inflationary pressures, the CPPE believes targeted structural interventions in these specific sectors will yield the greatest relief.

To address these pain points, the CPPE commended the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy for establishing a Ministerial Advisory Committee aimed at tackling these exact structural bottlenecks.

The group emphasized that sustainable price stability will only be achieved when federal, state, and local governments actively collaborate to restore security to farming communities, expand irrigation for all-season farming, and lower logistics costs across the agricultural value chain.

The think-thank also stressed that sustaining exchange rate stability and expanding domestic petroleum refining are vital to minimizing the heavy foreign exchange demand for fuel imports.

This, in turn, it noted would shield the domestic market from imported inflation and build a more resilient economic foundation.