The Nigerian Statistical Association (NSA), has called on the Federal Government to review existing laws relating to crude oil sales data collation process and those relating to transactions in the Free Trade Zones.
The association said this will enable the country get reliable statistical data on all trade transactions on export commodities for effective planning and economic development.
Making the call recently in a lecture delivered to mark the African Statistics Day in Abuja, President of the NSA, Dr. Muhammed Tumala, said current laws were inhibiting open data production and denying the country the opportunity of knowing the actual volume and values of transactions on key sectors of the economy.
Tumala, who spoke on the topic, “Open Data for Accountability and Inclusiveness: Prospects and Challenges for Nigeria”, noted that even though the Statistics Act 2007 established the Nigerian Statistical System with coordination by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), translating the provisions of the Act to national economic advantage remains a challenge as other systems and processes for open data are still lacking.
For instance, he explained that while demographic data is still being produced and managed outside the coordination of NBS, data production also remained too scanty in terms of functional and sectional coverage thereby making it difficult for planners and data users to have access to a comprehensive data on most sectors of the economy.
On the need to review the FTZs and other export trade laws, particularly those relating to crude oil lifting, the NSA President noted that exclusion of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) from assessing the oil lifting transactions and those of entities operating in the FTZs continued to raise questions about the validity of statistical figures on such trade being bandied by the government.
He said: “The importance of data in policy making cannot be overemphasised and all open data says is that such data should now be available to everyone that would either want to undertake research or carry out business decisions or design policies. That is what open data is saying.
“It is for citizens to insist on accountability and if they are to be accountable there is no other way of expressing accountability other than using data. It is for the media to also educate both the public on the need to use facts to hold public officers responsible for their actions.
“Such laws and policies on the FTZs and those that inhibit effective statistical data collation on all facets of our national life should be reviewed and amended. For instance, the exclusion of oil trade from the responsibility and activity of the Nigeria customs is one of such laws. There is no country in the world that does that.
“By doing that, you are unable to capture your trade data in that sector and unfortunately for Nigeria, over 90 per cent of our external trade is based on that sector. You can imagine that when over 90 per cent of your trade data is questionable then your entire data is questionable,” the NSA President added.
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