PRESS STATEMENT
The All Nigeria Peoples Party [ANPP] received with interest the news on Monday of the denial by the National Bureau of Statistics [NBS] the report credited to it that, according to an opinion poll it carried out, 75percent Nigerians opposed the introduction of N5000 notes. The curious rejoinder signed by the NBS management stated that they introduced some interactive tools on their website and data portal, one of which is an opinion poll, and that the opinion poll is used simply ‘‘as a social interactive tool to engage users of our statistical data’’; it also insisted that ‘‘its is not an official statistical tool because it is not based on any statistical methodologies or systems that formulate the basis on which all of the NBS’ surveys are developed’’. The odd official rebuttal ended by asserting that ‘‘those polls are not official and cannot be considered to be scientific in any way’’.
For starters, it is patently naïve at best, and deceptive at worst, for an agency as supposedly scientific and well-informed as the NBS to go public with a ham’s act of a rebuttal which tried to discredit one of its own most authentic and effective ways of gauging the heartbeat of the people, just in a bid to play to the gallery. To refresh our memory, last week a survey by the NBS, revealed that 75.1 percent of Nigerians are opposed to the currency restructuring by the Central Bank of Nigeria [CBN] which will lead to the introduction of the 5000 note as the country’s highest currency denomination and the conversion of lesser bills to coins. According to the poll, only 16.1percent of the Nigerian populace is in strong support of the CBN policy while4.04 and 4.62 percent are partially in support and against the currency restructuring, respectively.
Our great party believes that the above statistics is a manifest signpost of the wishes of the Nigerian people. But soon as the NBS had laid bare the truth in accordance with its constitutional mandate to always put up in facts and figures all issues affecting the lives of Nigerian citizens, it did a 360 degrees somersault by coming out again to unconvincingly deny its own statistics. We must not therefore hesitate to bring to the notice of NBS and the good people of this great nation the larger implication of such an attempted denial. The most important is that the Bureau has given Nigerians cause to doubt the validity of its often-criticized national economic growth statistics. In fact, it gives us shivers to consider that the latest of such statistics, which stated that the country’s economy grew by 6.28 percent in the second quarter of the year, from 6.17 percent in the first quarter, might be another hogwash to boost the ego of the current PDP government, just as the dismal rebuttal was actually intended to erase the vote of no confidence of the people on this present government and its anti-people policies.
The ANPP therefore calls on the National Assembly to summon the Statistician General of the Federation for him to explain the sources and methodologies of his statistical processes, as the denial of opinion poll calls to question his competence as a statistician serving a nation of more than one hundred and fifty million multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-creed peoples. In other developed democracies, opinion polls and random sampling, handled by professionals worth their salt, are veritable tools of accurately gauging the pulse of the citizens at any given time.
Signed:
Hon Emma Eneukwu
National Publicity Secretary
ANPP
18-09-12
