On the numbers, this has been the best month for the Nigerian economy in several years.

External reserves have reached 54.08 billion dollars, their highest in more than seventeen years. The naira is trading near N1,315 to the dollar, its strongest in two, and back in the N1,300 band for the first time since April 2024. The Central Bank's composite PMI hit 52.7 in August, the best reading in 29 months. Inflation has fallen for several months running, to 15.43 per cent in July.

Every one of those is genuine. None of them is what a household means when it asks whether things are getting better.

The arithmetic of a falling rate

Inflation at 15.43 per cent means prices are still rising. It is a smaller increase on top of two years of compounding increases, applied to incomes that mostly did not compound at all.

A stronger naira should eventually reach the market, but import pricing is sticky downwards in a way it never is upwards. A trader who repriced within days when the currency fell will take months to reprice as it recovers, and cannot be blamed for it — nobody wants to be caught holding stock bought at the old rate.

Where this goes

The government's case is that the reforms worked and the evidence is on the dashboard. The opposition's case is that the dashboard is not the economy. Both are arguing honestly from the same data.

What decides it is timing. If the exchange rate gain reaches retail prices before the campaign proper begins, the administration gets to point at something voters can feel. If it does not, it will spend 2027 explaining a set of indicators to people whose own arithmetic says otherwise.

The Monetary Policy Committee, holding at 26.50 per cent for a second meeting, has evidently decided not to gamble on that timeline. Cutting now would risk the disinflation trend that took two years to build.

Reporting by allAfrica. This summary was written by the TalkNaijaMedia desk.