Nigeria’s annual inflation rate dips in April

Nigeria’s headline inflation rate fell slightly in April, to 23.71% year on year from 24.23% in March, data from its statistics agency showed on Thursday. Inflation in Africa’s most populous country soared to repeated 28-year peaks last year, spurred by President Bola Tinubu’s moves to end costly subsidies and devalue the naira currency after he came to power in 2023. After a rebasing exercise where the statistics bureau updated its base year and reweighted the inflation basket, annual inflation fell sharply from 34.80% in December to 24.48% in January. It fell again in February before rising in March. A report by the National Bureau of Statistics showed food and non-alcoholic beverages continued to be the biggest contributor to the year-on-year inflation rate. Food inflation was 21.26% in April, down from 21.79% in March.