….NBS Remains Committed To Innovative Data Production – Statistician-General
The Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Sen. Atiku Bagudu, on Monday charged African governments and those in other developing economies to consider various operational and methodological approaches in generating statistical data needed for policy formulation and economic development plans in their countries rather than continue to depend on developed countries’ measurements in defining the performances of their economies.
Bagudu gave the charge in his Keynote Address at the ‘2024 African Statistics Day’ event organized by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in collaboration with development partners with the theme “Supporting Education by Modernizing Production of Fit-For-Purpose Statistics” in Abuja
While noting that the current practice of depending on the developed countries and their rating agencies to rank the performance of the African economies has continued to position the foreign countries’ at advantage in terms of data generation and presentation for planning and policy formulation, the former lawmaker recalled several occasions the issue had raised some concerns, especially when the peculiarities of sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are critically appraised and the foreign data are used as assessment parameters.
To reverse the ugly situation in which foreign rating and other economic agencies will continue to provide biased data on performances of the economies in The continent, the minister strongly advocated a new approach that would encourage the domestication of the data production processes and methodologies in Nigeria and other African countries such that the outcomes will reflect the actual realities of the economies.
The minister said: “Today, the market power of Amazon or Google determines what I buy. When COVID unfortunately struck the world, we saw data companies that were showing data about the movement of people. And it just shows that in a way, sorry to use this word, maybe data imperialism is still very active in the sense that some companies or some countries have an undue advantage when it comes to data generation and the way that data is presented.
“So I understand that we also need to recognize this and to compensate for it so that we are also using data in a way that we are telling our story.
“And one of those stories that I would like to end with because it’s important to my portfolio is for example, is there an objective way of determining how much investment a country of 230 million requires to have a good life for everyone? I believe there is. We can’t find it”, Bagudu stressed.
The minister, who also commended the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) for its transformational initiatives that over the past few years had impacted positively on policy formulation, planning and development in the country, said the agency had continued to enjoy independence in its operations without government’s interference to ensure the credibility of its data in line with global best practices.
According to him, the current administration remains seriously committed to the sanctity of data being produced by the Bureau to ensure that policies, programmes and their implementation are credible and can be used by both the governments, organized private sector (OPS) and other stakeholders for planning and other operational needs.
Bagudu maintained that the government had never made any move to interfere with the NBS’ data production activities in any way, shape, or form with the coordination, timing, adding that even “where some of us from an intellectual perspective want to engage in methodology debate, we make sure that we say it openly and transparently so that there will be no miscommunication as to what we are doing.”
Earlier in his goodwill message, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Education Manager, Mr. Jutaro Sakamioto, who spoke on the theme of the event, described education as one of the most important investments requiring data to guide the thrusts of policies in the sector
While noting that education does not only empower children and youth with the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in the increasingly changing labour market and society, the education expert pointed out that a country with well-educated and productive citizens, usually enjoy competitive edge in terms of increased tax revenue, decreased crime rate, and improved democracy with active citizenship.
According to him, this accounts for why so many countries globally continue to put education as their top national priority.
For instance, the UNICEF officer said that in Nigeria “the potential of education investment is particularly high in Nigeria where the child population is increasing at a rapid pace.”
Sakamioto, who cited the NBS’ Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey report to drive home his point, lamented that despite the past efforts to develop the education sector in the country, Nigeria continued to face the education crisis with a large number of out-of-school children and poor learning outcomes.
He clarified: “According to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, a nationwide household survey implemented by the National Bureau of Statistics with UNICEF’s support, 1 in 4 children are out of school and 75% of children do not develop foundational learning skills that are critical building blocks to develop advanced knowledge and skills.”
Describing paucity of data as one of major barriers undermining the development in the nation’s education sector, Sakamioto promised that the UNICEF with other development partners would continue to support the Nigerian government in improving the data governance and ecosystems in the nation’s education sector.
In his welcome address, the Statistician General of the Federation/Chief Executive Officer of the NBS, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, said that the theme of the African Statistics Day 2024 was a testament to the fact that NBS is becoming conscious of the issues facing the country as a system, and more importantly, it is prepared to and is taking the necessary steps to confront them.
According to him, the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey report data shows that entities that innovate, on average, experience a 30% growth in value than those that do not and outperformed them by 11% in terms of total revenue, annually.
Adeniran maintained that statistics agency had adopted the mantra of innovation to stay relevant in fulfilling its statutory mandate and this aligns with the Data Innovation Lab (DIL) initiative of the African Development Bank (AfdB) and the Roadmap for the transformation and modernization of official statistics in Africa being championed by the African Centre for Statistics.
Adeniran expatiated: “Accordingly, we have set up a Data Innovation Desk within the Bureau to advance, monitor, and track all data innovation initiatives across our production and dissemination processes.
“This can be seen in all aspects of our work, be it in the data we produce and the methodology we adopt, in the way we plan for our surveys, the way we collect and process the data, the way we report and disseminate information, and most of all, in the way in which we communicate the data to the public.
“All of this is in a bid to ensure that we provide the right data which is a critical tool for development to all our users in a timely manner and in a way that is useful and suited to their needs”, the Statistician-General stressed.
