Nigeria's inflation edges up

Nigeria's consumer price inflation stood at 9.6 percent year-on-year in December, up 0.2 percentage points from November, and still above the central bank's target upper limit of nine percent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Sunday. Food price inflation accelerated to 10.6 percent year-on-year in December from 10.3 percent in November, it said.
The NBS attributed the higher figure partly to higher prices of imported food items and petrol shortages.
The rate of inflation has now risen for a second consecutive month after slowing in October for the first time since November 2014.
Africa's biggest oil producer has been hit hard by the global slump in crude prices which has sent its currency, the naira, sliding to record lows on the parallel market.