Mistrust and metrics: The challenges of rebasing Nigeria’s economy

Nigeria's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is planning to rebase the country's GDP and Consumer Price Index (CPI). This process involves updating the base year used for calculating economic metrics to reflect changes in the economy. The current base year for GDP is 2010, while the CPI base year is 2009. Ever since the announcement last week, there has been a lot of commentary on social media about it. Some people have expressed apprehension that the NBS will use the opportunity to “magically” bring inflation down from its current level of