Princewill Demian
31 January 2017, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The Chief Executive Officer of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and Statistician General of the Federation, Mr. Yemi Kale, has said the Bureau has no data on the job creation claims made by the minister of labour and productivity, Dr. Chris Ngige.
Mr. Kale, who made this statement in an interview in Abuja, in response to the minister comments earlier that the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration has created seven million jobs through its programmes, said the agency was not interested in playing politics with its data.
He said, “We don’t have the data anyway, that data of is 6 or 7 million, we don’t have that. I can’t comment on what other data users or data producers say but I can comment on what we produce here as the official source of data.
“We have not produced any data on job creation, we produced data on people that were unemployed at the particular time and that is what we are sticking to.”
He added that, “We don’t do politics at the NBS. the National Bureau of Statistics is the official source of data. Our law does not allow us to be countered. The law says very clearly that NBS is the official source of Nigerian data.
“Everybody else can have their opinion, they can do their own computations if they want to but when it comes to national data, the authoritative source, the custodian of all data is the NBS.
“So we don’t comment on what other people even ministers say as far as data is concerned. Our data is for evidence based policy and decision making and that is what we do.”
