The former Statistician-General of Federation/ Chief Executive Officer of the National Bureau of Statistics, Dr. Yemi Kale, has said he resisted the urge to further change the country’s unemployment data-gathering methodology during his time as head of the statistics body.

He spoke barely a week after the NBS released a new data that put employment at 4.1 per cent. The agency had put unemployment at 33% in Q4 2020.

He noted that the committee in charge of reviewing the minimum number of work hours to count as employed felt one hour did not make sense because income generated within that time frame was not necessarily live-able.

He disclosed this on Arise TV’s Global Business Report on Monday morning.

He further stated that the income generated from 20 hours of work in Nigeria would equate to that made from working one hour in the US.

He opined that the most important point of data is give policymakers the tools they need to understand the problems, proffer solutions, and monitor the impact of those problems.

Kale said, “This is why I resisted (to change the unemployment-gathering methodology) for 10 years because it did not make any sense in terms of providing the information that our policymakers need. So the 20 hours was set because the committee that was set up, which included the ILO, presented their findings and they decided that one hour did not make sense because the income you will generate on an average from one hour’s work was not going to work.


Reacting to the ex-NBS boss’s comment, the Head of Communications and Public Relations Department of the National Bureau of Statistics, Wakili Ibrahim, said the new methodology was in line with international standards.

According to him, there are some Nigerians who earn from working for just one hour, and this set of Nigerians needs to be captured in the data.

He said, “The new methodology is internationally accepted. All our neighbouring countries in Africa are using the new methodology of one hour. When he was there it was 40 hours. Ask him (ex-NBS boss) why it was changed from 40 to 20 hours during his own time. Now, it is one hour.

“The world is changing. In high-tech countries, if you work for one hour, you can earn what somebody in a bank cannot earn in one year because of IT. Look at lecturers; a lecturer can go lecture for one or two hours, and they will pay him about N200,000 or N300,000 in one or two hours. So, what is the basis of ignoring those ones?

The NBS communications head also alleged that the NBS was in a bad state under the former statistician-general, which he described as worst performing.

“In my 30 years of service, he is the worst ever, and the youngest served statistician-general we ever had. Everything was crippled, not even light in the office. The money the government spent on NBS, we did not see anything,” he claimed.


Source: https://punchng.com/nbs-kicks-as-ex-statistician-general-faults-new-employment-data/

they both have good points.

but i think they are really going after his reputation. cheap shot. Kale has been one of the most performing statistician.

Awon weyrey, see a so called publicity secretary going after a former chief that had one of the best time in the history of the organization

That's what we knew them for. Fake statistics