Prince Clem Ikanade Agba, a former Minister of State for Budget and National planning, says data is a prerequisite element for national development.
Agba made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Uzanu, near Aganebode, in Etsako East Local Government Area of Edo.
He said there was no way any country could plan, grow and develop without having adequate data to achieve her goals.
“In Nigeria, especially in my ministry, we relied on data for planning and that was why we relied so much on the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS),” he said.
He however decried the situation where Nigerians ran down the system because the data was being released by federal government agencies.
“Sometimes, you hear some people quote figures from the World Bank. Yet the same World Bank is getting its figures from NBS.
“These people or organisations find it interesting to rely on World Bank figures. Does it make it more real because it’s coming from World Bank?” he asked rhetorically.
Agba said it was high time Nigerians had absolute confidence in our system and institutions and stopped running down our country.
“Honestly, that’s not being patriotic,” he said.
The former minister disclosed that while in office, “we tried as much as possible to give NBS more funding which enabled it to produce more data.”
He said: “I was concerned that we should not just be getting funding from donor agencies in developing our data so that they won’t one way or the other be influencing the results of our data.”
According to him, a lot was done in this area including the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), “which we released and people misinterpreted its intention.
“I had to explain that the MPI was more about deprivation. Which means that you can have money but no access to basic education, health, water and sanitation.”
Agba explained that those were the four main issues his ministry looked at in terms of the MPI.
“But when you look at these four things, they fall under the states and local governments.
“In our assessment, while Sokoto State came first with 81 per cent MPI, Bayelsa, a rich state, came second. This tells you that it is not about money but about access to the basic things,” he emphasised.
The former minister said while most governors concentrated those basic facilities within the city areas, they neglected the rural areas where the dwellers were left to their fate.
Hence, Agba said “in the National Development Plan 2021-2025, we began to take these facilities to the rural areas and started preaching integrated rural development where there is power, roads, sanitation and water.”
He explained that when governors refused to work with statistics provided by NBS, they encourage rural migration which ultimately lead to creation of slums and when the slums grow, the state of insecurity grows.
“These are all linked. And that is what MPI is about. And it is NBS that has done all these surveys and has given the ministry the data.
“The states are being encouraged to use this data provided by NBS to spread development in the three senatorial districts and not to slap them (states) because the MPI covers the 109 senatorial districts nationwide,” he explained. (NAN)
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