Eniola Akinkuotu, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari says the statistics on Nigeria released by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are not necessarily accurate.
Buhari said a lot of the statistics have no bearing on the reality on the ground.
He, therefore, stated that there was a need for Nigeria to have its own independent statistics gathering mechanism.
The President said this in a series of tweets on Wednesday.
He said he had mandated his economic advisory team with the new task of having proper statistics gathering mechanisms.
Buhari said, “We must domesticate our policies to reflect our local realities. While we very much welcome the cooperation and support we are getting from our friends abroad, it is important to make it clear that Nigeria can only truly move forward with homegrown solutions.
“This must extend to data collection as well. Today, most of the statistics quoted about Nigeria are developed abroad by the World Bank, IMF and other foreign bodies. Some of these statistics are wild estimates that bear little relation to the facts on the ground.
“We can only plan realistically when we have reliable data. As a government, we are taking very serious steps to improve the quality of data available for policymaking, and today I charged the Presidential Economic Advisory Council to prioritise the collection of primary data.”
Both the World Bank and the IMF have in recent times lamented the debt profile of Nigeria in relation to GDP.
The World Poverty Clock also described Nigeria as the World Poverty Capital, a designation rejected by the Buhari administration.
The statistics regarding the high unemployment rate and poverty released by the National Bureau of Statistics which is a government agency, have also been rejected by the Buhari administration.
The statistics regarding the human rights records which was released by Amnesty International have also been rejected by the government.
