The Statistician-General of the Federation, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, has charged journalists and Civil Society to cooperate with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) regarding inaccurate dissemination of information as the country gears up for a general election where a lot of statistics and numbers will be quoted and used to score political points.
He said the actions and output must be seen to be objective, honest and reflective of the true circumstances of the situation at hand.
Mr Adeniran urged all to also seek ways to individually and collectively enhance their capacities to analyse and interpret the indicators and the numbers produced by the statistical system, and not just quote verbatim what is written in the reports.
In so doing, he affirmed that journalists will facilitate better communication and reporting of the indicators and their meaning to the general public and all users of the data, as well as cultivate an interest in statistics within society.
Mr Adeniran said, “most importantly, I charge you to come up with specific plans and methods on how we can jointly build public trust and confidence in official statistics and government figures, so that the policies of the government, which is underpinned by the data we disseminate, 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”.
The Statistician-General of the Federation who stated this at a workshop for journalists and civil society organisations on Wednesday in Keffi added that “only when this is done in an honest and objective way, will we see a more robust and strong engagement between the statistical system, the media and civil society.”
He pointed out that the NBS as the national statistical office and coordinator of the national statistical system in Nigeria, occupies a very crucial role, yet very delicate, and 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 as 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 tightrope, 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 further stated.
Mr Adeniran noted that some persons will not believe anything published by NBS simply because it is a government institution, however, when the same thing is published by the International Monetary Fund (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.
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