Bismarck Rewane, economist and managing director of Financial Derivatives Company, has faulted the April 2025 inflation report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), questioning its credibility and comparing the data inconsistencies to the recently exposed JAMB exam scandal.
According to the NBS, Nigeria’s headline inflation dropped marginally to 23.71 percent in April, from 24.23 percent in March. But Rewane, who appeared puzzled by the figures, argued that the data present a contradiction: states that grow the bulk of the country’s food are seeing extreme inflation, while consumer-heavy states are recording unusually low inflation levels.
“Inflation was highest in Benue at 51 percent, Ekiti at 34 percent, and Kebbi at 33 percent — these are food-producing states,” Rewane said. “Meanwhile, Ebonyi, Adamawa, and Ogun — states that are primarily consuming these food items — posted some of the lowest inflation rates: 7.19, 9.52, and 9.91 percent respectively. How is that even possible?”
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Drawing a direct analogy to the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) exam scandal, where results were recently discredited due to technical errors and suspected manipulation, Rewane raised doubts about the data collection process used by the NBS.
“Are those numbers credible? If they aren’t, then what exactly are we seeing here? A distortion in methodology? A JAMB-type situation?” he asked. “The inflation gap between Benue and Ogun is nearly 43 percentage points — what has happened?”
‘Government Isn’t Stabilizing Prices — It’s Distorting the Market’
Rewane didn’t stop at the data. He moved to broader concerns about how inflation is being interpreted and managed. He warned that the recent drop in food prices, such as the temporary decline in rice, may not be sustainable. Factors like rumors of poisoned rice and increased imports have led to short-term price volatility, not long-term stability, he said.
“Yes, we’ve seen some food prices come down,” he admitted. “But is it real or sustainable? The rice price fell partly due to imports and partly due to people avoiding rice because of rumors it’s poisoned. That’s not policy success — it’s fear and external supply.”
He highlighted tomatoes as a more telling case, noting a 107 percent price increase due to the spread of “tomato ebola”, a plant disease. Meanwhile, dairy prices held relatively stable — a signal of the uneven and unpredictable shifts in the food basket.
For Rewane, the policy response from the government has been both weak and misdirected.
“It’s not the government’s job to produce or sell food,” he said. “That’s the wrong model. The market determines the efficient price. A trader imports rice, offers it for sale, and the consumer makes the decision based on his income.”
He argued that interventions aimed at lowering food prices miss the point — Nigeria’s inflation is driven more by structural issues than monetary phenomena.
“You can’t reduce inflation by just pumping food into the market or manipulating prices,” he said. “There’s an output gap driven by insecurity, poor logistics, high diesel and petrol costs. Then on the other side, you have excess liquidity that fuels demand. That’s the inflation mix.”
Monetary Policy Not Enough to Fix Structural Deficiencies
While acknowledging the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s role in controlling inflation through interest rate hikes and liquidity tightening, Rewane stressed that monetary policy is not enough.
“The CBN can curb demand, yes, but output and production growth comes only from power stability, efficient logistics, lower business costs, and improved farm yields,” he said.
He added that production shortfalls in the face of unrelenting demand will always fuel inflation, regardless of how high the CBN pushes the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR).
Rewane’s comments come at a time of deep public skepticism over official data, with more Nigerians expressing doubts about economic reports that fail to align with market realities. The NBS figures showed a national inflation decline, but many Nigerians say they have seen no relief in food markets, where the cost of goods remains high.
With the NBS maintaining its position on the CPI numbers, Rewane has become the latest voice to question the authenticity of the agency’s figures. The concern has been whether government data truly reflects Nigeria’s economic conditions — or whether the country is navigating policies and metrics built on compromised foundations.
With public trust in institutions like JAMB already shaken, and prices of essentials like rice, tomatoes, and other staples still show a stark difference from the NBS data, the challenge facing the government is no longer just inflation — it’s credibility.
Our underdevelopment closely mirrors our inability to understand numbers. Historically, Nigeria is never good with numbers. We neither know how to count figures nor grasp the meaning of numbers. Our failure in that regard is there for all to see. We have no clue about our population figures, our voters register is nowhere near accurate. The counting of electoral votes is even a bigger nightmare. And we think it’s corruption, no it’s not. We are simply terrible with numbers.
How do we expect NBS to deliver accurate numbers when nothing about us lends credence to that? If JAMB understood numbers, it wouldn’t have released the results, it would have known that such anomaly is beyond statistical error. NBS is telling you inflation rates across states without understanding the meaning of numbers and the message therein. If it does, it would have known that what it published is a statistical anomaly. But being that understanding numbers is not our thing, any institution can publish anything, the debates and counters can come later.
It is not different from those who believe that Nigeria has plenty money to make everyone wealthy, it’s all products of not understanding numbers. We take weakness as strength.
The solution? Teach numbers.