Buhari’s state of denial

LAST week, President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated a new Presidential Economic Advisory Council (EAC) under the headship of Lagos Business School economics professor, Doyin Salami. The new EAC replaces the Economic Management Team (EMT) headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. President Buhari’s comment during the inauguration ceremony to the effect that “We can only plan realistically when we have reliable data;” his disclosure that “we are taking very serious steps to improve the quality of data available for policymaking;’ and finally his mandate to the EAC to“prioritise the collection of primary data” offer grounds for optimism that the days of data-free economic planning at the highest levels of government may be over.

Yet, worryingly, President Buhari also made additional comments that tend to suggest that he is motivated by unfounded economic nationalism. In arguing that local institutions are better suited than foreign agencies to collate records, the president lamented that “Today, most of the statistics quoted about Nigeria are developed abroad by the World Bank, IMF and other foreign bodies. Some of these statistics are wild estimates that bear little relation to the facts on the ground.”

Empirically, the president’s observation is true. Most of the data used by experts (domestic and foreign) seeking to understand trends in Nigerian politics and economy are in fact generated by foreign organisations, led by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It is equally true that when concrete data are not available, these organisations engage in statistical modelling, which basically means that they use currently available data to project a future reality. This work of inference is standard statistical practice.

The all-important question that President Buhari does not ask is why anyone looking for reliable statistical information on Nigeria (including, in many cases, the Federal Government itself) would rely on data produced by the World Bank and the IMF. The simple reason is that neither the Federal Office of Statistics (FOS), nor its successor, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), is given the needed support to produce the kind of reliable data upon which planning and projections can be based. To be sure, this has nothing to do with the quality of personnel working in these organisations, but everything to do with the conditions under which they operate and are expected to generate data. For instance, when Nigerian political scientists and sociologists joke that they don’t know for certain the Nigerian population, they are basically indicting the very bureaucracies saddled with the production of reliable data.

The problem does not stop there. Apparently, President Buhari seems to be unaware that the same foreign organisations at which his ire is directed are in fact not only partners with the NBS; in the case of the World Bank, they actually give financial support to the NBS. How can the president condemn the World Bank, albeit without any concrete evidence, for offering “wild estimates that bear little relation to the facts on the ground,” only to turn around and beg the same organisation for money to collect statistical information?

We do not wish to be seen as whitewashing either the IMF or the World Bank. It goes without saying that both organisations have their problems, and their ultra pro-market politics have been amply documented in the relevant sociological and political literature. Yet, for President Buhari to hang them out to dry for problems they did not create is not only unconscionable, it is utterly escapist. Would there not be a problem of poverty in Nigeria even if the World Bank or IMF data had nothing to say about it?

Instead of looking for foreign scapegoats, the president should allow the EAC to do its job.