NBS doesn’t have data backing Ogbeh, Ngige’s claim on employment – Kale

Statistician General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Mr. Yemi Kale has dismissed the job creation numbers being touted by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

According to Kale, the NBS which is the agency with the legal mandate to generate national data has no data to back up the claim.

Recall that the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chris Ngige and the Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh have made claims that the government has created over 7 million jobs recently and countered Dr. Kale’s unemployment figures.

Reacting to an interview on GatefieldTV programme,  Kale said: “We don’t have the data anyway, that data of 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.”

According to Kale, the NBS was not interested in politics. He dismissed the claims made by the ministers as mere opinion.

“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,” Kale said.

Kale also disclosed the real issues around the 16 million unemployed Nigerians as revealed in the 2017 report and cited the number of people entering into the job market among others. He also spoke on political pressures and the issues around his work as Nigeria’s data chief.