The Statistician General of the Federation, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, has adduced reasons why the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is walking a tight rope.
Prince Adeniran explained that as a government agency, it strives to be objective and independent in carrying out its mandates so as to gain confidence and trust of the people as well as disabuse their minds of any sentiments.
The NBS Chief Executive who spoke while declaring open Media Retreat for Journalists in Keffi, Nasarawa State to acquaint them with the processes of data generation and interpretation, maintained that it is very critical for the NBS to remain unbiased in carrying out its mandate in order not to misled the government or the people on the socioeconomic realities.
According to him, “NBS as the national statistical office and coordinator of the national statistical system in Nigeria, occupies a very crucial role, yet very delicate. Unlike other offices of government that are responsible for implementing and defending government policies and programmes, NBS, by the nature of its mandate, is expected to be independent in its operations.
“This is necessary to gain the confidence and trust of all users (government, private sector, and the public) in its products and output. So, we are always walking a tight rope, in the sense that, we must always remain objective and professionally independent.
“Doing this, especially in our environment which can be polarised by certain sentiments, is increasingly difficult.”
He decried situations where some persons doubt the reliability of its data until it was cited by international agencies, adding that such persons forgot that the agencies lift the statistics from the NBS.
“Some persons will not believe anything published by NBS simply because it’s a government institution. However, when the same thing is published by the IMF or the World Bank, or any other development partner, they accept it without question, forgetting completely, that those same development partners rely on us fully to produce those indicators. So, as can be clearly seen, we are in a sensitive position.”
On the other hand, he said: “I guess this is the same for the media in many respects. Some sections of the public will only believe a news item or story if it came from a foreign media outlet, as opposed to a local outlet. Consequently, given this prevailing phenomenon, we have to work hard to rebuild this trust in the public.
“It also means, being transparent and opening up our processes to the public, within the limits of what is practically possible, for them to see and understand the workings of our systems. In doing so, we can begin to rebuild this confidence and get more of the public on our side, as we continue to fulfil our mandate of accurately and adequately informing the public.”
He charged the participants to learn more about the working processes and deliberate on other issues that relate to the statistical system and to come up with specific plans and methods on how to jointly build public trust and confidence in official statistics and government figures, so that the policies of government, which is underpinned by the data being disseminated, will have a better chance of making an impact.
This is very significant even as we go into the season of a general election where a lot of statistics and numbers will be quoted and used to score political points. Our actions and output must be, and must be seen to be objective, honest and reflective of the true circumstances of the situation at hand.
On his part, the Director of Communication and Public Relations Department of the Bureau, Mr. Sunday Ichedi, noted that the retreat meant to bring journalists, Civil Society Organizations, the management of the Bureau and experts together was targeted at
discussing issues arising from statistical reporting in Nigeria with the aim of avoiding mistakes in the reporting of Statistical data covering all facets of Nigeria’s development to the public.
“This is important given the fact that Statistics is used by both private and public sectors and individuals in decision making. For a credible decision, the information disseminated in the form of data to the general public must be accurate to achieve data guided policy, planning and implementation for national development,” he stated.
