NBS statistics shows we’re making progress – Buhari
President
Muhammadu Buhari says the recent statistics reeled out by the National
Bureau of Statistics shows that his administration is doing well.
Buhari
said this on Wednesday during a Gala Night organised by beneficiaries
of the government’s Anchor Borrowers Programme held at the State House
Conference Centre, Abuja.
The President said this barely hours
after the NBS announced that the number of unemployed persons of working
age had risen to 20.9 million.
He said that statistics from the NBS has confirmed that his administration’s policies are yielding results.
Buhari said he inherited, “A broken system in the agricultural sector in 2015”.
After
hearing testimonies from some rice farmers, the President said, “Seeing
your faces and hearing your stories give me hope. Today, we are on the
track to achieving an all-inclusive economy.”
The Senior
Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba
Shehu, had said Buhari had ordered the Statistician-General of the NBS,
Dr. Yemi Kale, to change the high unemployment statistics and reflect
the rising rate of employment in the agriculture sector.
Shehu
said during a recent meeting with the Federal Executive Council, Kale
admitted that the NBS was only focusing on the creation of white collar
jobs and not the agriculture sector and the informal sector.
“Rice
Producers Association of Nigeria made the open claim and nobody has
challenged them up until the time that we speak, that they had created
12 million new jobs,” Shehu had said.
Kale, however, denied ever making such a claim.
The
United States Department of Agriculture World Markets and Trade had
said last month that Nigeria imported three million metric tons of rice
in 2018.
The US report had said the import figure is 400,000
metric tonnes higher than the quantity of the product that was imported
in 2017.
The report also stated that Nigeria’s local rice production dropped from 2016 to 2018 compared to the situation in 2015.
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