Ondo State Statistician General, Mr Dayo Aregbesola, has blamed the poor coordination of statistical system and activities at the state level on economic recession.
Aregbesola told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday that the situation had affected the quarterly meeting of heads of states’ statistical offices in the country.
NAN recalls that the Statistician-General of the Federation, Dr Yemi Kale, announced a quarterly meeting between the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the body of State Statisticians-Generals from first quarter of 2016.
According to him, the meeting will help to address the challenge of duplication of data and ensure consistent methodology in data gathering and dissemination.
Aregbesola said that the forum which was expected to meet quarterly, only met once because of paucity of funds to carry out its activities.
“We are supposed to be 19 states that have put in place the bureau but only 14 of us have been very active.
“We thought the forum will be able to raise money but it didn’t come.
“The money is supposed to come from individual states and we couldn’t contribute because some of the states are complaining that salaries were not even paid.
“The contribution would have strengthened the forum to achieve its objective,’’ he said.
Aregbesola said the forum was able to implement alternative plan by creating a platform on social media to relate on its activities.
The statistician-general said the platform had helped the body to compare notes and presented a common front to the Statistician-General of the Federation.
“We were able to come out with a proposal that when NBS is organising any survey across the country, we should be involved.
“This proposal will strengthen the collaboration between the forum and the NBS,’’ he said.
NAN reports that the objective of organising a forum with the head of states’ statistical offices was for the NBS to get update on the statistical projects across the country. (NAN)