Buhari appoints Simon Harry as new Statistician-General as Yemi Kale bows out

President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the appointment of Dr Simon Harry as the new Statistician-General of the Federation to head the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Yunusa Abdullahi, spokesman to the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, announced this in a statement on Thursday.

Mr Harry is to succeed the out-going Statistician-General, Dr Yemi Kale, whose second term tenure of five years expired on August 16.

Currently, Harry is the Director, Corporate Planning and Technical Coordination Department of NBS with almost three decades of statistical experience.

He joined the Federal Office of Statistics as Statistician 11 in 1992 and rose to the position of a substantive Director of Statistics in 2019.

In the course of his civil service career, he has contributed to several reform initiatives including the reform of the then Federal Office of Statistics which was transformed to the current National Bureau of Statistics.

He also contributed to the reform of the Nigerian Statistical System which resulted in the creation and establishment of state bureaus of statistics at the sub-national level.