Yemi Kale may be leaving the NBS – these are the 5 ways he transformed the place

On 16 August, the five-year tenure of Yemi Kale, the Statistician General of the Federation and chief executive officer of the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), came to an end.

And boy will he be missed?

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You see, Kale was appointed by former President Goodluck Jonathan in August 2011 when he was just thirty-six years old.

But somewhere along the line, Kale was viewed with a level of distrust and suspecion as many disbelieved the statistics reeled off by the NBS under him. Overtime, Kale has become a hero – of sorts – to many social media conscious Nigerians who follow current trends.

He went on to substantially transform our concept of statistics, made statistics a relevant tool in governance and policy making, and redefined the NBS as a government orgainization that understand the importance of technology in its work.

Under Kale facts and numbers became less of political tools to be manipulated to suit popular interest and more of a nonnegotiable, integral part of our country’s growth and development. It regained a crucial bi-partisan credibility.

The bane of Nigeria is the unavailability of reliable and verifiable data. This is even as Nigerians are increasingly conscious about the importance of data mining and data processing in nation building. Civil societies (such as BudgIT, FollowTheMoney) have raised the bar on our understanding of public financial system.

But on the other hand, public officers like Kale has brought to the fore public data that can be used by private citizens, businesses, NGOs, etc. to make decisions and forced government to have a conversation about the real state of the country rather rely on self-serving data, unverifiable data and claims.

The NBS in the last few years has moved away from being ‘just’ another government agency with unjustifiable annual allocations, but an institution around which policy and decision making is built around.

But enough of this.

Here are the five ways that Kale transformed the NBS.

1. Kale spearheaded the rebasing of Nigeria’s economy in 2014 which revealed that Nigeria was actually the largest economy on the continent -overtaking the economy of South Africa and becoming the 26th largest economy in the world.

It also revealed that unbeknownst to many a lot of non-oil sector were contributing significantly to Nigeria’s economy.

After the rebasing of the economy in 2014, The Economist described Nigeria’s economy thus: “Nigeria now looks like an economy to take seriously.”

Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product was last calculated in 1990.

2. Tracking of Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, the NBS under Kale’s leadership began ground works to track and map out data needed to achieve the United Nations seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are geared towards ending poverty in the world.

3. Monitoring of the oil sector

The oil sector is Nigeria’s cash cow -literally.

Despite this, little is known about the exact amount of money coming out of the sector and the extent of the effect the oil sector has on the economy.

But the NBS, in collaboration with another government agency, tracked the data from the oil sector to discover that Nigeria spent N20.2 trillion to import petrol, diesel and kerosene between January 2010 and September 2015.

4. Release of Consumer Price Index (CPI)

Under Kale, the NBS promptly released the monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) which measures the level of inflation in Nigeria.

The CPI released by the NBS in the last few months clearly pointed out that the Nigerian economy was tanking, before it sank into a recession.

However, it is easy to assume that the relation between Kale and the Buhari administration was probably strained as the monthly CPI was a source of great embarrassment to the federal government.

5. Data release calendar and technology

The NBS established a data release calendar on its website with the date that relevant reports and data will be released to the public. The NBS also launched interactive web portals (across several digital platforms) as well as social networks which allows for feedback from users (public).

There are whispers that this government will retain him – it will be one of the wisest decisions it has made in recent years.

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