New Telegraph 
• ‘There’s clearly a wide gap between statistics and the real life experience of the average Nigerian’ – Business owner
•Things getting better now, there was no improvement in anything under Buhari – Teriba
With reports pointing to consistent drop in inflation eliciting excitement in some quarters, a number of Nigerians lament that the cost of living remains sky-high. LADESOPE LADELOKUN, in this report, highlights the struggle of Nigerians with cost of living crisis and the need to expeditiously tackle it
She makes no pretense of her illiterate status. In fact, economics jargon means nothing to her. With her tribal marks giving her away as an Oyo indigene, she voiced her ignorance at the mention of inflation:” Ki lo n je be? Mi o lo ile iwe o” (what’s the meaning of that? I didn’t go to school) It is a story of the reaction of a petty trader and widow, Bolanle Ajao, to reports of dropping inflation before she was schooled by this reporter. According to her, reports of crashing inflation do not align with her realities.
“It is only garri that the price has decreased. And it is at the market we normally buy it. But by the time you add what the transportation cost is, it is almost the same as what we have around. And you know our people, even when prices crash, they will keep it high.
I’ve not seen what has dropped. Look at a kilogramme of gas, it is now N1,600. A bottle of groundnut oil is N2,300. If prices crash, one will sell cheap. May God not make us hungry. What I sell here is not even enough for my fatherless children to feed,” she lamented. Despite food inflation slowing to 1.65 per cent in August, compared with 3.12 per cent in July on a month-on-month basis, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, a number of Nigerians confronted with the twin bitter realities of static incomes and depleting purchasing power still lament Nigeria’s hunger and cost of living crises.
This is even as Nigeria’s headline inflation slowed for the fifth consecutive month in August 2025 as data released by the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS) recently showed that inflation dropped to 20.12 per cent, down from 21.88 per cent in July In the 2024 Global Hunger Index, Nigeria ranks 110th out of the 127 countries with sufficient data to calculate 2024 GHI scores. With a score of 28.8, Nigeria is said to have a disturbing level of hunger. Meanwhile, despite the consistent drop in inflation, a great number of Nigerians interviewed by this newspaper still lament Nigeria’s hunger crisis amid high energy costs, prohibitive rent, rising school fees, among other daily worries they live with.
More Nigerians speak
An Abuja-based economist, Ola Aina, in a chat with Sunday Telegraph, argued that if inflation reduction were real and significant, it would reflect in interest rates cut. “The NBS said inflation has been reducing. I understand they changed the way the rate is derived. But the decrease, even at that, is marginal. When prices of goods rose as a result of fuel subsidy removal and Naira devaluation, they rose significantly, but any downward trend has been almost negligible.
The CBN recently reduced interest rates by 0.25 per cent. It’s even too little to make any significant change in the commercial market rates. If inflation reduction is real and significant, it ought to have been reflected in the interest rates deduction.
And that didn’t happen,” he said. Bola Lawal is a trader in the Ketu area of Lagos. The mother of three said it was time the Nigerian government saved Nigerians from the current hardship she said was now unbearable. “It is still hard to buy food, let alone cooking gas. When Buhari was in charge, I was saying things were bad, that we never had a worse government.
Now that we have our Baba Tinubu in government, suffering has continued. This hunger is too much. Hunger everywhere. I’ve decided to keep my cylinder somewhere. I now depend on charcoal. Honestly, I’m tired of this country. The hardship here is now unbearable,” she lamented Another trader in the Mowe area of Ogun State, Wura Adekanbi, said: “For me, I‘m not finding it easy. What I’m getting from the liquid soap I sell now cannot sustain me and my family. My husband is not doing anything for now.
He deals in timber and somebody made away with his money. So, I’m seeing to the upkeep of the family for now. Before, with the proceeds from my liquid soap, I was feeding the home while my husband was paying the kids’ school fees and house rent but now, we can’t even feed well, let alone my children’s school fees. I have told my children that if they drive them away from school, they should come back until further notice.” Seun Abegunde, a teacher, said: “ I can’t feel any significant effect of the inflation drop.
I spend a lot on transportation. The school fees I pay for my children keeps increasing. Salary has not increased. Yes, we see a hundred naira, two hundred naira reduction on food items here and there, but they are not significant enough to bring relief. For instance, I was buying a Derica of beans for N1,200 . I now buy for N1,100. Some could sell for N1,000.Let Tinubu do something about the economy, please. This hunger is too much.” Sade Otolorin, a fashion designer, said: “Nothing has come down. Please tell them. School fees, petrol, everything is high. Just three days ago, they raised the price of gas.
The gas we used to buy at N350 per kg is now N1, 300. How much were we buying a Derica of beans before? We were complaining that it was expensive, now it is N1,000. Look at spag, it is N1,200. We were buying it for N800. Even Okada is expensive. Let them have mercy on us.” A roadside corn seller, Habibat Olotu, stated: “It is only rice and garri that have dropped.
We bought rice for N1500, but now we could get it for N1100 per Derica. We still want the prices of yam, palm oil, groundnut oil, fuel, spaghetti, and transport to drop.” For the Chief Executive Officer of CMS Brands and Prints, Clement Oyegbami, the figures of inflation drop by the NBS don’t reflect the realities of Nigerians, alleging that they were cooked up.
“To be honest, I believe the government only manipulated this report. It doesn’t reflect our everyday realities in any way. Prices of goods and services are still very high, and the masses are still struggling to feed. Workers can hardly afford basic necessities because their purchasing power has been completely eroded. Salaries have remained the same. Yet, inflation continues to bite hard.
There’s clearly a wide gap between the statistics being presented and the real-life experience of the average Nigerian.” Meanwhile, the lamentations about hunger appear to align with the projection of the United Nations that 33 million Nigerians could face hunger this year.
Recall that in November 2024, three UN agencies had appealed for lifesaving support in Nigeria, owing to record inflation, climate shocks and ongoing conflicts, which it said could spike the population of food insecure people.
The figure represents a sharp increase from the 25 million, who need assistance today, the World Food Programme (WFP) said in a joint statement with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “Never before have there been so many people in Nigeria without food,” Chi Lael, WFP Spokesperson for the country, told journalists at the UN in Geneva, according to the United Nations website.
“A recent assessment found that immediate support is needed to avert a potential food and nutrition disaster in the face of triple-digit increases in food prices, the aftermath of devastating floods, and 15 years of insurgency in the North East.
Nigeria faces a monumental hunger crisis in the second half of 2025, particularly in the North Eastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, home to some five million people, who are facing acute food insecurity. Other areas including emerging hunger hotspots in Zamfara, Katsina, and Sokoto states are also at risk,” it stated.
‘Progress not only measured by statistics’
In his Independence Day speech, President Bola Tinubu expressed delight at the growth of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), describing it as the fastest in four years. Tinubu said the GDP expanded by 4.23 per cent in the second quarter of 2025, noting that it was above the 3.4 per cent projection of the International Monetary Fund(IMF).
He added that inflation fell to its lowest level in three years to 20.12 per cent in August 2025. “Under our leadership, our economy is recovering fast, and the reforms we started over two years ago are delivering tangible results,” Tinubu said.
Reacting, the President of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Archbishop Daniel Okoh, stressed that true progress must not be measured by economic statistics. “True progress must be measured not only by statistics but by the food on every table, the security of every community, and the opportunities available to every child.”
Crash food prices, Tinubu orders
In what appears to be a heed to the call by Nigerians to the government, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, earlier in the month, reportedly directed a committee within the Federal Executive Council to ensure further crash in food prices in the country.
According to the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, who stated this in Abuja, while presenting a paper at a one-day capacity-building workshop for journalists covering the Senate, the president’s order would be enforced to further crash prices of food items by ensuring the safe passage of products through various routes across the country.
He said :“I can say it on good authority to you that the President has given a marching order to a Federal Executive Council committee already handling it.
“We are aware, and I’m sure, as media, you are also aware, there are routes through which commodities are taken before they are delivered. If you know the amount of money that is being spent, you can now understand why those commodities have to be expensive at the point of delivery. So, we are working very hard, and we are doing quite a lot. But I’ve just given you a snippet because I’m here, and I felt we should look at that.”
Recall that the Tinubu administration, in a bid to tackle hunger, had reportedly rolled out 2,000 tractors and over 9,000 farming implements, marking what has been described in some quarters as Nigeria’s largest mechanisation drive ever.
Things getting better now than under Buhari -Ayo Teriba
Commenting, economist and public affairs analyst, Dr Ayo Teriba, said although Nigerians are not where they desire to be, Nigeria has experienced some measure of progress. Teriba, in an interview with Sunday Telegraph, said the Tinubu administration met a terribly bad economy, stating that recovery doesn’t mean Eldorado.
“For eight months, since January, except March, inflation has been on the downward trend after 18 consecutive months of increase up till December 2024. So, the change in trend is unmistakable. So, if you went to the market a year ago, they would tell you things were getting worse. If people are saying things have remained the same today, that’s progress. That is good news.
The battle we are fighting is for things not to get worse. Three months ago, I saw market women on TV being interviewed, saying the price of rice had dropped, the price of beans had dropped.
The slowing of inflation doesn’t mean a drop in price. It means the rate at which prices have been increasing is slowing down. So, the temperature is not getting worse. The temperature is beginning to cool. We are still at 20 per cent. 20 per cent is still high. We are heading for a single digit.
So, if we were coming from 33 per cent in December and we are at 20 per cent in August, we are not saying the body temperature is zero. If we continue at that rate, by December, it will be 15 per cent that the government is aiming at. By June 2026, it will probably be at 10 per cent. That’s recovery. GDP growth has gone back to four per cent.”
“The last time we saw four per cent GDP growth was Q3 2021, four years ago. That’s an improvement. Recovery doesn’t mean Eldorado. Recovery means we are now approaching Eldorado. Whereas the situation was already getting worse when Tinubu assumed power and he said ‘when I start this treatment, it will first get worse before it gets better’ .
It got worse for one and a half years, and it started getting better in the last nine months. And if you give him another nine months, it will even get better. That’s recovery. Things didn’t get worse in one day. Things got worse before Tinubu took over. It started getting worse under Buhari. Under Buhari, there was no improvement in anything.”
Inflation drop only temporary, expect hike early next year – Don
Baring his mind, a senior lecturer in the Economics Department of the University of Lagos, Dr Babatope Ogunniyi, predicts that inflation will drop further before the end of the year, but noted that a hike will be experienced next year.
“Considering the various economic indices, we are seeing a departure from the different position of things. There could be many factors surrounding this new order. One of them could be the season. And when you look at it, relatively, we are in the harvest season now.
You expect some of these farm produce to start hitting the market, and since we don’t have storage, from this period, maybe till November, we are likely to experience the bumper. When the harvest is with us, we get the boom.
About two months ago, a tuber of yam was about N5,000 and above, but what we are seeing now is something very low to what it was some two or three months ago. So, ordinarily, the indices would spell it that way.
When the NBS assesses the rate, it will find out that there is an appreciable drop in inflation. That is, money is getting a wonderful return in a way, in terms of exchange. So, having said this, there are other indices that are being concealed, most times when we measure inflation.
We measure the indices from the exchange rate. There is an appreciable trend there, which is another plus. Not only that, when you consider the trade balance, you will see that Nigeria is working more into the international market,” he told Sunday Telegraph.
He added: “You will see that the hue and cry about the demand for Dollars has dropped a little.. So, when you put all these factors together, you will see that there is an appreciable decrease in inflation.
But to an ordinary person on the street, it is not defined to them because in some areas, some of the things they buy remain the same in price. It has not trickled down. “In another few months, we should expect another drop in the system because by December, January, people will be entering the arena in terms of the election year coming in 2027. So, it begins from 2026. They will pump more money.
More money means there is going to be a hike in inflation. But, the period preceding this period, you should experience a drop in inflation. It is going to rise by early next year. And this time around, we may not be able to curtail it as we are doing presently. Unless there are other things that would have to be injected into the system to really douse the tension that may be created from it. That is just it. There will be inflation next year.”
Govt can do more to tackle cost of living crisis – Muda Yusuf
In an interview with Sunday Telegraph, former Director General of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Dr Muda Yusuf, submitted that the trickle down effects of the government’s reforms would be gradual, noting that some positives had been recorded.
“I believe some progress has been made. The progress may not be as fast as many expected or hoped for. This whole process is a journey and this is not a sprint. It is a long journey.
The recovery can only be gradual. What has been achieved, which is very critical and fundamental, is to have a basic macroeconomic environment, that is when you can begin to have some concrete benefits in terms of trickle down effects of these reforms.”
He added: “Now, we have seen that the exchange rate has been stable, and it has been a major factor driving inflation, driving cost of living, driving cost of production, driving operating cost, and all these things are the things that have created problems for us in the last two or three years. But that particular variable is being arrested now. We are beginning to see stability and everyone can testify to it.
We are also beginning to see some drop in inflation…But now, we have to move to the second phase, which is to address the cost of living crisis. It is still a crisis. I agree. We’ve moved past the worst phase but the government can do more.”
Meanwhile, the World Bank, on October 8, expressed concern that in spite of Nigeria’s economic stabilisation efforts, about 139 million citizens, by its 2025 estimate, live in poverty. According to the bank, the country risks losing reform gains if they fail to translate into tangible improvements in people’s welfare.
The World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Mathew Verghis, said: “Despite these stabilisation gains, many households are still struggling with eroded purchasing power. Poverty, which began to rise in 2019 due to policy missteps and external shocks such as COVID-19, has continued to increase even after the reforms. In 2025, we estimate that 139 million Nigerians live in poverty.”
