ABUJA: Nigerian Statistical Association (NSA) has called on the Federal Government to involve the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) in the monitoring of crude oil export and refined petroleum products importation with a view to ensuring reliable statistical data on the nation’s merchandise trade.
This was even as it also advocated urgent review of the existing policies guiding economic activities in the Export Processing Zones (EPZs), including how export-import trade in the zones could be accessible to agencies involved in data collation and production for national planning and development.
Setting the agenda for government at the just ended 39th Annual Conference of the Association in Oshogbo, Osun State, the National President of the association, Dr. Mohammed Tumala, pointed out that these policy measures were required to get accurate data on Nigeria’s merchandise trade trends on a broader scale and by implication, support statistics-based planning for development.
Tumala, who described the exclusion of statistics as a core subject in secondary school curriculum as undesirable for the country, explained that the involvement of the Customs Service in crude oil lifting and fuel import regime, given the agency’s capacity to do so, would go a long way in minimising the abuses that had characterised the oil and gas industry operations over the years.
On the current moves to build a credible identity database for Nigerians as well as the anti-corruption crusade in the country, Tumala said that such agenda would only succeed if the relevant agencies had the right data to work with and also involve professional statisticians in the collation, analysing, production and application of such statistical data on their investigations.
He therefore advised security agencies such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to see how they could begin to rely on and adopt proactive data mining approaches to fight financial and other crimes in the country.
While expressing the readiness of the association to partner the various agencies including the EFCC, ICPC, DSS and the NIMC, Tumala disclosed that the NSA was prepared to help state governments establish their Bureaux of Statistics to support their drive towards effective policy implementation.
In his opening speech at the conference, Osun State Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, appealed to the association to rise to the challenge of helping the country develop a credible statistical database on key areas of education, health and the economy, among others, to support the three tiers of government in basing their developmental agenda on statistics-based planning.
Aregbesola, who particularly urged the group to always voice their professional views whenever interpretation of statistical data becomes contentious in national debates among groups with divergent socio-cultural and political leanings, said that it was only by doing so that it can guide such discourses and decisions that would be taken on them after all.
The governor pointed out that while the NSA saw statistics as essential to good governance based on the theme of the conference, “Statistics for Good Governance”, he believed that “on a broader scale, statistics goes beyond governance; it encompasses life itself, mostly in an informal way.”
