Prince Clem Agba, the Minister of State for Finance, Budget and National Planning, has called on statisticians to speed up the adoption of digital technology for statistical purposes.
Agba made this call at the opening ceremony of the 45th Annual Statistical Conference in Keffi on Thursday.
It was gathered that the three-day conference has the theme: “Security Challenges in Nigeria and Associated Consequences: A Statistical Overview”.
The minister said the swift pace of technological developments should not only facilitate the rapid collection of data but also lead to more effective data management.
“Just like the COVID-19 pandemic challenged the world to think outside the box, the time has come for statisticians to speed up the adoption of digital technology for statistical purposes.
“Policymakers and statisticians today need to be at the forefront of the advances in statistics to identify new linkages and risks to calibrate effective policy responses,” he said.
Agba noted that every nation in the world had security challenges, but the type of insecurity experienced among the nations and the way it was confronted differed.
He commended President Muhammadu Buhari and the heads of the various security agencies for the renewed efforts at ensuring that peace was restored to hitherto security-challenged areas of the country.
The Statistician-General of the Federation, Prince Semiu Adeniran in his remarks, urged participants to keep to the core values and conduct of statisticians.
Adeniran said this was necessary, especially during the present political season where a lot of data and statistics were being thrown around from various angles and sources.
“Our role is to produce and disseminate data objectively and professionally for all users, without favour.
“In doing so, we will maintain the integrity, objectivity, and professional independence which are the only currency we have as statisticians.
“We all know that once this is lost, it is very difficult to recover, so we must protect and maintain it at all cost, not only for ourselves today but also for the younger statisticians coming up,” he said.
The President of the Nigerian Statistical Association, Mr Godday Ebuh, said the conference was aimed at grilling security challenges and associated consequences in Nigeria’s ecosystem today and beyond.
” To this end, critical discussions of Nigeria’s prosperity projections and the factors affecting its growth, including security challenges, demographic and economic indices are on the front burner.
“The primary goal of the conference is to aggregate possible permanent solutions to a myriad of pending issues affecting security of lives and property of Nigerians in their quest to build Nigeria’s nationhood,” he said.
NAN reports that Agba and Adeniran were both inducted as fellows of the Nigerian Statistical Association. (NAN