The National Bureau of Statistics has named Benue, Ekiti, and Kebbi as states with the highest year-on-year food inflation rate in Nigeria.
NBS made this known in its April Consumer Price Index released on Thursday.
The report showed that Benue has the highest year-on-year rise in food inflation rate with 51.76 percent, followed by Ekiti with 34.05 percent and then Kebbi with 33.82 percent.
What this means is that food prices rose the highest in Benue, Ekiti, and Kebbi States.
In contrast, Ebonyi, with 7.19 percent; Adamawa, with 9.52 percent; and Ogun, with 9.91 percent, recorded the slowest rise in food inflation on a year-on-year basis.
On a month-on-month basis, Benue, Ekiti, and Yobe were the states with the highest food inflation rise.
Accordingly, Benue month-on-month food inflation in April stood at 25.59 percent in Benue, 16.73 percent , and 13.92 percent.
Benue food inflation rise may not be unconnected to the surge in attacks in the North Central state of Nigeria in the past two months, with scores dead and many displaced.
On the flip side, Ebonyi (-14.43 percent), Kano (-11.37 percent and Ogun-7.06 percent) recorded a decline in food inflation on a month-on-month basis.
This comes as NBS data showed that Nigeria’s headline food inflation stood at 21.26 percent in April on a year-on-year basis.
The April food inflation rate was 2.06 percent, down from 2.18 percent recorded in March 2025. The downward trend was attributed to “the rate of decrease in the average prices of maize (corn) flour, wheat grain, dried okra, yam flour, soybeans, rice, Bambara beans, and brown beans,” NBS data stated.
Media Talk Africa reports that Nigeria’s headline inflation cooled off to 23.71 percent in April from 24.23 percent in March.
