Nigeria's leading private-sector think tank is calling on the federal government to move beyond monetary tools and confront the structural roots of rising prices, starting at the farmgate.
The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) issued the warning in a policy brief released Monday, following the National Bureau of Statistics' (NBS) report that Nigeria's headline inflation rose to 15.93% in May 2026, up from 15.69% in April, as rising consumer prices continued to put pressure on households and businesses.
The CPPE expressed particular concern over food inflation, which stood at 16.96%, warning that it continues to outpace headline inflation and erode household purchasing power. For a country where food spending absorbs the largest share of household income, that gap is not a statistic; it is a daily crisis for millions of families.
At the heart of the CPPE's argument is a diagnosis that policymakers have been slow to act on. CPPE CEO Dr. Muda Yusuf pointed to insecurity in farming communities as a major structural driver of food inflation, noting that it has displaced farming communities, reduced cultivated acreage, disrupted agricultural supply chains, and increased transportation costs.
The CPPE said Nigeria's inflation challenge remains largely cost-push in nature, meaning the solution should focus more on production and distribution costs than on monetary tightening alone. That stance puts the think tank in direct tension with the Central Bank of Nigeria's (CBN) rate-hike approach, which critics argue has squeezed credit without resolving the supply-side bottlenecks keeping prices elevated.
There were, however, modest signs of easing. The CPPE noted that month-on-month figures showed a more encouraging trend, with headline inflation moderating from 2.13% in April to 1.75% in May, while food inflation eased from 3.63% to 2.98%. These monthly movements suggest the pace of price increases is slowing, even if the year-on-year trajectory remains stubbornly upward.
The CPPE urged government intervention across food security, transport infrastructure, mass transit, rail development, energy supply, and safety in farming communities to ease cost pressures across the economy. It also framed farm security not merely as a rural welfare issue, but as a macroeconomic imperative, arguing that addressing insecurity should be viewed not only as a national security priority but also as a key economic strategy for controlling inflation.
With global energy markets still unsettled by Middle East tensions, the pressure on Nigeria's food and transport costs is unlikely to ease on its own. The CPPE's message is unambiguous: rate hikes alone will not bring prices down. The farms have to be safe first.
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