Alain Gaugris, a Senior Statistician at the Bank, said this on Monday in Abuja at the 2013 African Statistics Day celebration, which had as its theme ‘Quality Data to Support African Progress’.
He said the bank was partnering the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) because of the importance of statistics to development and poverty reduction.
“The World Bank is actively involved in statistical development in Nigeria, mainly through the 10 million dollars grant for Statistics for Results Facility (SRF) project,” he said.
According to Mr Gaugris, the project, which spans 2011-2014, is focused on capacity building at the federal level for NBS and National Population Commission (NPC) staff, as well as members of staff of six pilot states.
The states are Anambra, Bauchi, Edo, Kaduna, Niger and Ondo.
“The objective of the three-year project is to initiate the implementation of the National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS) by producing reliable statistics in participating states,’’ he said.
Mr Gaugris said the project was meant to improve the legal and institutional framework in NSS to improve vertical and horizontal coordination.
“It is also meant to develop the human resources, statistical framework and the Information Technology infrastructure in the NSS to professionalise statistical production in Nigeria,’’ he added.
Muhammad Tumala, the President, Nigerian Statistical Association, stressed the need for collaboration between producers of statistics at national and sub-national levels to avoid conflict in national data.
Mr Tumala called for sustained cooperation and collaboration of all data-gathering agencies to improve production of quality statistics in the country.
The Statistician-General of the Federation, Yemi Kale, said the 2013 African Statistics Day was held to promote the importance of statistics in national planning, policy formulation, monitoring and evaluation of government projects.
He said the theme was selected to draw attention to the importance of quality statistics for evidence-based decision-making in economic management, poverty reduction and all aspects of socio-economic development processes.
Mr Kale was represented by George Oparaku, the Director, Real Sector and Household Surveys Department in NBS.
The celebration was initiated in 1990 by the Joint African Conference of Planners, Statisticians, and Demographers, a subsidiary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa.
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