The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently rated as one of the best in Africa is at risk of not being able to do its job of gathering and providing data, which usually shows the direction and performance of various sectors of Africa’s largest economy.
This was made known to BusinessDay when it asked a source from the state-funded agency why it failed to publish the labour force statistics earlier scheduled in its calendar to be released on June 25, 2019.
The source said NBS was not able to release the report as intended due to the fact that the president had not appointed his cabinet, which in return was dragging budget implementation.
“As you know no agency has received capital from this 2019 budget year and our data is under capital,” the source, who prefers anonymity, told BusinessDay.
President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in on May 29, for a second four-year term after emerging winner on a 3.9 million vote difference in a keenly contested election between the country’s main opposition presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.
Following the inauguration ceremony, there are high expectations that the 76-year-old Nigerian president would hit the ground running by quickly constituting a ministerial team to save the country from the consequences of a delay that occurred in 2015.
After President Buhari was sworn in2015, it took him about six months to set up a ministerial cabinet to drive the policies in the Economic and Growth plan (ERGP). A delay that culminated into dragging the country into a lengthy recession that crippled the oil-dependent nation.
Over one month into his second tenure, the number one citizen of Africa’s most populous nation is yet to constitute his cabinet. Whereas, 96 hours after Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president was sworn in for a second term, he constituted a team of men and women as members of his ministerial cabinet.
“Incidents like the NBS being unable to release key statistics because there is no Minister will increase the longer the President delays naming the Cabinet,” Andrew S. Nevin, Advisory Partner and Chief Economist at PWC told BusinessDay by mail.
According to Gbolahan Ologunro, an equity research analyst at Lagos-based CSL Stockbrokers, the time lag between when policies are implemented and when the impact would be felt in the economy will extended due to the delay in forming the cabinet. According to him, MDAs who are spread across some critical sectors- power, housing will have their Capex plans delayed.
“At the end of the day, the overall impact on the economy is that the actual time when policy, disbursement and when the impact on the economy will be felt will be longer. So you will not see the impact of the budget probably till early next year- sometime in the first quarter of 2020,” Ologunro said.
Checks by BusinessDay revealed that the federal government in the past reported frequent cases of distorted budgetary cycle. This negatively affected the nation developmental process, hindering key infrastructural growth and productivity in the country, BusinessDay findings revealed.
The budget cycle refers to the life of a budget from its formulation, through its legislative approval to its execution and evaluation.
Scarcely has the budget implementation at the federal level in Nigeria commenced officially in January of any fiscal year except in 2001, 2007, 2009 and in 2013. Rather, as it has always done in the past, the government extends the timeline of the budget from December to Q1 of the next year.
As at December 2017, the government had spent less than 50 percent of its 2017 CAPEX budget and had announced that the remaining funds will be rolled over to 2018. Thus, BusinessDay analysis showed that Nigeria’s budget cycle has only been completed four times in 19 years.
Checks by BusinessDay revealed that the inability of NBS to release the 2018 fourth quarter and 2019 first quarter Labour force statistics is the second delay in one year.
In June 2018, the stat office disrupted its calendar to release the same Labour force data due to the delay in budget implementation.
According to the source from the stat office, “assuming budget is approved and funds for the work is released,” the employment and unemployment data would have been released.
Meanwhile Nigeria’s unemployment rate hit a record high of 23.10 percent as at the third quarter of 2018, according to the most recent report by NBS and Chris Ngige, minister of Labour and productivity said the figure could reach 33.50 percent by 2020.
This is fuelled by the fact that Nigeria economy has expanded at a slow pace since its exit from recession in the second quarter of 2017.Since 2015, Nigeria’s GDP growth rate has remained below its annual population growth rate of 2.7 percent. Meaning more people became poorer than they were five years ago.
