How statistics boost GDP growth
The rebased GDP exposed to us a lot of structural changes in our economy. What statistics has done is to provide policy pointers and I think the sectors that have become very prominent, where the country has a lot to do have been thrown up. So the country could now sit down and ride on this and now make appropriate policies to take advantage of the information we have. To be specific, as you would have seen during the discussion on the newly rebased GDP, we used to think that agriculture used to provide a greater proportion of our national output. But you can see that that has shifted to services. But it is also unfortunate that services that should have been riding on industries are riding on imports. The implication of that is that we are now providing or paying for other countries to manufacture goods. These are areas where I think the government should be able to take policy decisions of moving forward.
Using statistics to grow income generation
Well, I think that there are two things here. First is the numbers that have come up. One, if we claim to be doing well in the collection of taxes, the reason possibly for the very significant change in the tax-to-GDP ratio is that the informal sector in Nigeria is very huge and, of course, we all know that the informal sector has not been captured into our tax net for now or at least not as well as we think.
If the reason was that we have not done well enough in bringing in our taxes, the new ratio shows us how much of tax that could be available for government to develop the country. But I would want to think that it is in between the two. I think we do not have a precise idea of the size of the informal sector of our economy. I think we need to do a lot to be able to formalise some of the activities in that sector if we want to ride on that to improve our tax level.
The second aspect of it is that the oil and gas sector plays a huge role in our economy and up till today all of us know that businesses in that sector have continued to be outside of the public domain and companies in that sector are yet to be listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). That is also the same with the huge companies in the communication sector. If they are not listed or they are not publicly owned, then there will be issues of whether the tax revenues coming from such entities are really the actual level. We should know because listing them now provides an additional platform on which shareholders can ask questions and managers of such companies are accountable to shareholders.
Partnering government to implement development planning processes
There is growing consciousness about statistics generally in the country and I think this began when we started thinking as a nation, in terms of where we were as compared to other countries. As you are aware, studies have shown that if Nigeria does few things, we can be among the first 20 largest economies in the world and therefore we now have a national vision to be able to achieve the outcome of such studies.
Yes, accompanying that, the National Planning Commission (NPC) has become active and you cannot have a vision without a framework for achieving and monitoring that. So, we now have a national monitoring system in place and it was as part of realising such a framework that we now had to re-invent our statistical system. The enabling law was passed and the Statistics Act that established the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in 2007. These are all indications that the country is realising that to grow a nation, you need comprehensive information about all aspects of our nationhood.
Well, that is happening only at the national level, there are three tiers of government and that has to run through to the local governments. It is slow but I think the NSA and statisticians as professionals that work in different agencies of government are up and coming to provide the required data. They have started to align to international standards in production of data, they are advocating to political leadership to take decisions, they are advocating and sensitising members of the different legislative houses to use data in informing their own debates and decisions. I think that is the role the NSA can play and we are playing so to the best of our ability. We see that moving forward or not too far from now we would be able to bring all statisticians under one umbrella like the accountants, lawyers and so on, whereby the NBS employs and trains the statisticians for posting to different ministries and departments. That would indeed harmonise our data production processes and we would become efficient in using the funds available. I think the association has a great role to play.
Status of Nigerian Statistical Association’s Bill at the National Assembly
The Chartered Institute of Statisticians of Nigeria Bill is a bill that has an objective of professionalising the practice of statistics. By the way, the statistician is just like the medical doctor. If a medical doctor administers wrong drug to a patient, that could lead to some side effects or unintended effects. So also, if the statistician produces wrong data and policies are made on such wrong information, there could be drastic implications to the economy and institutions that use such data. So, we are aware of that and we want to be sure that if we are involved in the production of data, you have to comply with certain code of ethics, you have to comply with certain code of professional practice. That is the intention of the bill. The bill had been transmitted to the two chambers of the National Assembly as a private bill.
At the House of Representatives, it has passed the second reading and it has been referred to a committee and that committee has already conducted a public hearing on it. That committee should now have a clean draft of the bill again for presentation for third reading.
At the Senate, it has passed the first reading and it is now being prepared or scheduled for second reading. I understand also that if one chamber of the National Assembly conducts a public hearing, there could be some inter relationship, some inter-discussions between the two chambers in such a way that the chamber that has gone far ahead could transmit the bill for concurrence on the other floor of National Assembly. So, we are going to explore all possibilities to ensure that the bill is passed before the end of the life of the current assembly.
What NSA is doing to engender youths’ interest in statistics
I agree with you that there is so much we need to do, particularly at the youth level. Let me tell you a sad thing that has happened; when I was in secondary school, I had the opportunity to study statistics and even sat for it as a subject in my school certificate examination. Today, our young ones do not have that opportunity as it has been delisted from one of the subjects that youths could sit for in examination even though at a very lower level. Statistics is so inter-related that it is taken as a component of Mathematics. But we still feel that because of the importance of statistics, which is just like any other language like English that everybody, including market women, housewives and children use, we need to do more to improve its importance and visibility in the public domain. Everyone should be comfortable with the use of data to plan our lives.
I think that if our youths are exposed to statistics at early stages of life, then, they would imbibe it as a habit even when they are interested in leadership much later in life. We are already talking to the Federal Ministry of Education to ensure that that situation is reversed. We are also trying to introduce some competition but for now at the university level, because they don’t have access to statistics at lower levels. Those of them that are given courses by imposition to read statistics don’t even know what they would be doing after graduation. So, we want to be able to enlighten them on the importance of statistics, what career prospects are available for them, particularly at the first two years of their university level. These are some of the things we have planned to do in addition to public sensitisation and training that we do for states that do not have capacities to produce data. We train their staff to be able to produce data.
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We’re committed to professionalising statistical practice in Nigeria –Dr Tumala |
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