How Tinubu’s Inflation Recalculation Collides With the Reality of Nigerian Households
When school resumed this September, my son’s best friend did not return with the other children. At first, I thought he was simply taking his time to resume. Perhaps his family was making arrangements, I reasoned, and he would appear in class after a few days. But the days became weeks, and his seat remained empty. Eventually, my son and I decided to visit his house to find out why he had not returned to school.
His father’s explanation has stayed with me. He was tired of paying the school fees. Not the fees of a child just entering the school, but those of a returning pupil whose education was already under way. He had reached a point where the cost had become too much to bear.
I have thought often about that visit. Here was a father who could no longer sustain an expense connected to his child’s future, and a boy whose absence from school had begun with a financial decision made at home. The child had not necessarily lost interest in learning. His education had encountered a barrier that had nothing to do with his ability or willingness to learn. His father’s resources had reached their limit.
I do not know how many other children have failed to return to school for similar reasons, or how many parents are making comparable decisions behind closed doors. But I know what I heard in that house, and I know why the conversation has remained with me. When a father says he is tired of paying his child’s school fees, the words carry a weight that no reassuring economic headline can make disappear.
This is where Nigeria’s argument over inflation becomes more than a debate about percentages. It becomes a question of what economic progress actually means when a family can no longer afford to maintain a way of life it once managed.
In February 2025, the National Bureau of Statistics rebased Nigeria’s Consumer Price Index, changing the reference year and updating the expenditure weights used to calculate inflation. The headline inflation rate, which had stood at 34.80 per cent in December 2024 under the previous series, was reported at 24.48 per cent for January 2025 under the new methodology. The change attracted considerable attention, coming after a period in which rising food prices, higher transport costs and mounting household expenses had placed millions of Nigerians under severe pressure.
The figures appeared to offer welcome news. But there was an important qualification: Nigeria had changed the way inflation was measured.
Rebasing an index is not, in itself, evidence of wrongdoing. People’s spending habits change, new products enter the market, and the share of household income devoted to different goods and services evolves. A consumer basket that no longer reflects what people buy can produce a less accurate picture of their spending patterns. Updating it is a legitimate part of statistical work, and the National Bureau of Statistics should be able to perform that work without every methodological change being treated as a political conspiracy.
But the distinction between changing the measurement and improving people’s circumstances is one the government must not allow to become blurred.
A lower inflation rate does not necessarily mean that prices have fallen. It means that prices are rising more slowly than before. If the price of food has climbed beyond what a family can afford, a subsequent slowdown in inflation does not automatically make that food affordable again. The price level may remain painfully high even when the rate of increase moderates. And if wages have failed to keep pace with the rise in living costs, a household may continue to lose purchasing power long after the headline figures begin to look more encouraging.
This is the difficulty with presenting a decline in inflation as though it settles the question of economic hardship. The figures measure changes in prices; they do not, on their own, establish whether families have recovered the ability to pay their bills.
My son’s friend’s father did not need to understand the technical details of a rebased index to know what had happened to his finances. He had a bill to pay, and he could no longer comfortably meet it. The school fees had become too much. That was the reality he had to confront, whatever the latest inflation figures said.
The Tinubu administration introduced its major economic reforms against a background of deep structural problems. The removal of the petrol subsidy and the unification of the foreign exchange market were intended to address distortions that had placed considerable pressure on public finances and the wider economy. But these measures also brought substantial costs for households and businesses. More expensive petrol raised transport costs; the cost of moving goods fed into the prices of food and other essentials; and families found that their incomes could buy less than before.
The consequences are not identical for everyone. A household with savings, secure employment and a comfortable income has more room to absorb rising costs than a family that spends almost everything it earns on food, transport, rent and education. For the latter, an increase in one expense can force a reduction somewhere else. School fees compete with food bills. Transport competes with household needs. A medical expense can consume money set aside for another obligation.
This is how economic pressure enters a family: not always through one dramatic catastrophe, but through a succession of bills that become harder to meet until something has to give.
For the father I met, the school fees had become that point. His experience does not prove that a particular government policy alone caused his difficulty, and it would be wrong to claim that one family represents every Nigerian household. But it reveals what aggregate statistics can leave unexplained. An economy can register a moderation in inflation while some families remain so financially strained that they must reconsider whether they can afford to keep their children in school.
That is why the presentation of inflation figures matters. Governments have every right to report genuine improvements, and a sustained decline in inflation would be welcome news. But a favourable indicator should not be mistaken for proof that the wider cost-of-living crisis has been resolved. If the administration believes its policies are beginning to ease the burden on Nigerians, it must demonstrate that improvement in terms people can recognise: food becoming more affordable relative to income, wages recovering purchasing power, transport taking a smaller share of household earnings and parents being better able to meet essential expenses.
The timing of the rebasing made clear communication especially important. The change came after a punishing period of price increases, when public frustration over the cost of living was already intense. A substantial movement in the reported inflation rate was bound to raise questions. Citizens needed to understand how much of the change reflected the revised methodology and how much reflected actual changes in price movements.
The answer cannot simply be that the new figures are lower. Nor should the figures be dismissed merely because they differ from what people expected. The responsibility is to explain what has changed, what the revised numbers reveal and what they cannot establish about the circumstances of Nigerian households.
This responsibility extends beyond the government. Investors and international institutions need reliable economic indicators, but assessments of national progress should not stop at headline inflation. Purchasing power, real wages, food affordability and the ability of families to meet basic expenses also matter. A country cannot judge the quality of its recovery solely by whether selected indicators have improved; it must also consider whether the people bearing the cost of adjustment are beginning to experience relief.
None of this means that Nigeria’s economic difficulties began with Tinubu. The country entered his presidency with longstanding fiscal weaknesses, an expensive subsidy regime and a foreign exchange system burdened by serious distortions. Those problems required attention. But the existence of inherited difficulties does not remove the administration’s responsibility to show what its policies are achieving. Nor can the hardship associated with reform be justified indefinitely by promises of eventual improvement.
Citizens who have endured higher transport fares, rising food costs and shrinking disposable incomes are entitled to ask when the benefits of reform will become visible in their own lives. They deserve more than a succession of encouraging indicators. They deserve evidence that the sacrifices demanded of them are leading somewhere.
The National Bureau of Statistics, for its part, must retain the credibility and independence necessary to measure the economy accurately. Its methodology should be judged on statistical grounds, not on whether the resulting figures please the government or its critics. But statistical accuracy and political accountability must go together. A government that cites the numbers as evidence of progress must be prepared to explain their meaning and acknowledge the limits of what they prove.
I return to the boy who did not resume school with his classmates because his absence gives the argument a human dimension that the percentages alone cannot provide. Somewhere, a father had reached a point where paying school fees was no longer sustainable. Whatever other circumstances may have contributed to his decision, the result was a child whose education had been interrupted by a family’s financial limits.
That is not an argument against rebasing the inflation index. It is an argument against confusing a revised measurement with a recovered standard of living.
Abuja can update the basket of goods, revise the weights and adopt a more representative method of calculating inflation. Such changes may improve the quality of the statistics. But they cannot, by themselves, restore a family’s purchasing power, reduce the burden of school fees or put an absent child back in the classroom. Those improvements require changes in the economic circumstances that families confront every day.
The real test of progress is not whether the numbers have become more agreeable, but whether people can afford more of the lives they are trying to live. Until a family can meet its essential expenses with greater confidence, a lower inflation rate must be treated as one measure of economic change, not the final verdict on the nation’s recovery.
My son’s friend should be in school with his classmates. His father’s struggle to pay the fees is a reminder of what remains unresolved when economic success is discussed only in percentages. The numbers have their place, but the lives behind them are the reason those numbers matter.
You can rebase the numbers, but you cannot rebase reality.
Stephanie Shaakaa shaakaastephanie@yahoo.com
08034861434
