President Bola Tinubu has highlighted some measures his government will adopt to rein in stubbornly high inflation to 15 percent next year.

Tinubu, during a first presidential media chat on Monday night, said one of the ways he plans to slow prices that have shrunk citizens’ incomes is to “produce more for consumption locally”.

The Nigerian leader also identified supporting imports and giving “reasonable level of funding and assistance, low interest rate to farmers, improving the security as you see in the budget so that they can return to their farms and you know produce more food”.

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Persistent insecurity in the food-growing regions of the country has seen farmers scurry off their farmlands amid fear of being kidnapped or killed outright.

Flooding is also exacerbating Nigeria’s food insecurity as farm produce are being destroyed in thousands.

Tinubu further said inflationary pressures will be reduced by encouraging the procurement and manufacturing of drugs in the country especially as renowned multinational drugmakers like GlaxoSmithKline had left Nigeria amid tough business environment.

“It’s about time we do all of those. Bring the cost of governance down, we will try,” Tinubu said to journalists at the media chat.

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In the proposed 2025 budget, the federal government seeks to bring inflation rate down to 15 percent up from a more than 28-year high at 34.6 percent.

A projection many experts said was very ambitious but skeptical about its feasibility as inflationary pressures still persist.

Economists have outlined higher food prices and soaring transport costs – a situation borne out of the steep rise in petrol prices – as drivers of Nigeria’s headline inflation.

Veriv Africa, a research and data-focused firm, sees aggregate inflation at 31.7 percent in the best case scenario next year. This outlook aligns, although not too closely to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) average of 27.7 percent in 2025.

Some analysts have also revealed that the projections may be achieved since the country aims to rebase its economy, drive in capital inflows and expand its revenue base but warned that if food inflation is not tackled, the assumptions might just remain so.