Nigeria’s Statistician General, Yemi Kale, , has made a passionate plea for more support from stakeholders to support the implementation of the National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS II), which according to him will enhance timely data in the country.
Kale who made this call on Wednesday at the Launch of the NSDS II/ Sector Statistics Strategy and National Consultative Committee on Statistics (NCCS) in Abuja said Sector Statistics Strategy and the State Statistical Master Plan (SSMP) were integral components on the NSDS.
The Statistician-General who was represented by Samanja Mando, NBS Director for Field Service and Methodology Department, assured that the Federal Government would leave no stone unturned in putting in place the necessary statistical infrastructure that would support the implementation of NSDS.
Kale while challenging the participants to come up with feasible ways and means of improving the delivery of good statistics strategy, expressed optimism that the recommendations that would emerge from this workshop will help in repositioning and refocusing the production of statistics in Nigeria.
“In essence, as the NSDS is being implemented, the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) will be implementing the Sector Strategy Strategies, while the states implement the SSMP simultaneously.
“I appeal to all the affected government authorities to accord the implementation of these strategies the desired support. This is critical in order to provide robust and reliable statistical information that would support government’s decision- making processes as well as proper planning of socio-economic programmes, he said.
NSDS according to him is designed to provide a framework for the development and ownership of statistics in the country, by sufficiently equipping the system in terms of human resources, tools and infrastructure to provide timely and reliable statistics.
Earlier, Patricia Ewerema, NBS Director, Demography and Social Statistics said Nigeria required a robust statistics to enable it effectively design programmes towards the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
She said that the country required statistics to monitor progress made towards achieving the desired goals and targets.
“In the course of this launch, synopsis of the NSDS 11 and Sector Statistics will be given as a way of giving participants some insights into the their contents.
“I urge you all to actively participate in the deliberations in order to achieve the objective of this event,’’ Ewerema said.
