The most accessible measure of inflation in most African states, especially in Nigeria, is not a bulletin but a chalkboard. In markets across the country, sellers write prices in chalk rather than paint, because paint assumes tomorrow will resemble today. A trader repricing her stock weekly is not being opportunistic. She is doing arithmetic the currency forces on her.
Inflation is usually discussed here as a cost-of-living problem, which it is, and rarely as an information problem, which it also is. A price is how an economy signals what is scarce. When the general price level moves quickly and unevenly, that signal becomes unreadable. A manufacturer cannot tell whether his input costs rose because the material became scarcer, in which case he should substitute, or because money lost value, in which case he should not.
Multiply that across millions of decisions and the coordinating function of the market degrades. This was Hayek’s central observation about prices, and Nigeria has been an unwilling demonstration of it.
The current position should be stated precisely, because loose numbers invite dismissal. Headline inflation stood at 15.93 percent in May 2026, up from 15.69 in April and 15.38 in March, the third consecutive monthly increase, and well below the 26.06 percent of May 2025. Month-on-month inflation eased to 1.75 percent from 2.13 percent, so the pace of increase slowed even as the annual rate rose. Food inflation was 16.96 percent year-on-year. These figures rest on the rebased Consumer Price Index using 2024 as the base year, which means they are not directly comparable with the headline readings above 30 percent published under the previous methodology. A direct comparison between the pre-rebasing series and the rebased series should therefore be made with caution. The earlier inflation was real. The difficulty is methodological comparability, not historical fiction.
So the accurate summary is narrower than the triumphant one. Inflation is far below its 2025 level, the disinflation is real, and it has stalled and partially reversed over the last three months. The Central Bank’s part in that story needs to be told correctly. Its first rate cut in years came in February 2026, when the Monetary Policy Committee reduced the benchmark rate by 50 basis points, from 27 percent to 26.5 percent. By the time the Committee met again in May 2026, it chose to hold rather than cut further, leaving the rate at 26.5 percent through the month the inflation figures above describe. The easing, in other words, had already happened and had already stopped by the time headline inflation resumed its climb.
The causes are plural and should be described as such. Nigerian inflation has reflected a combination of monetary conditions, exchange rate movements, food supply disruption, energy and logistics costs and fiscal pressures. Assigning primacy to any one of these is a claim requiring evidence that this argument does not need. What matters for policy is that several of the drivers sit outside the central bank’s reach, which is why interest rates alone will not finish the job. Food inflation driven by insecurity in growing areas does not respond to a policy rate.
Ayittey’s contribution concerns incidence rather than causation. His analysis of post-colonial African economies returned repeatedly to arrangements that transferred value from producers, particularly farmers and market traders, to a governing class. Inflation performs that transfer without legislation, assessment, or a collector. It falls hardest on those holding cash rather than assets, which in Nigeria means the market trader more than the property owner, and it is diffuse enough that nobody is held responsible for imposing it. It is a levy that reaches everyone and appeared on no ballot.
The counterargument is not trivial. Tight money is expensive. The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria reports average prime lending rates of about 27 percent as of May 2026, with maximum rates near 35 to 36 percent, even after the policy rate came down. Bank credit to the manufacturing sector fell by ₦1.92 trillion in a single year, from ₦8.53 trillion in December 2024 to ₦6.61 trillion in December 2025, a decline of 22.5 percent. Manufacturers argue this makes long-term industrial investment commercially unattractive. Every percentage point of policy rate has a factory attached to it, and anyone arguing for monetary discipline should say plainly that it has victims.
But the alternative is worse and Nigerians have lived it. A country that inflates its way through fiscal pressure does not avoid the cost. It distributes the cost to whoever is least able to hedge. High interest rates announce themselves and can be reversed. Inflation arrives unannounced and cannot be refunded.
What sustains disinflation is not central bank resolve alone. It is fiscal restraint, agricultural output, which requires the security discussion nobody enjoys, and data published reliably enough that expectations can settle on something real.
The chalkboard is the test. When Nigerian traders start painting their prices again, the reform will have worked, and no statistical release will be needed to confirm it.
