Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Atiku Bagudu, has called on Nigerians to extricate themselves from data imperialism.
Bagudu, who spoke at the 2024 African Statistics Day celebration in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, bemoaned the country’s continued reliance on other nations for its data.
The theme of the event was “Supporting education by modernizing production of fit-for-purpose statistics.”
The Minister said some countries have unmerited advantages in terms of data generation and presentation and therefore urged Nigeria and Africa to appreciate that some firms and countries skew data generation and presentation.
He called on Nigeria to also use its data to tell its own stories.
Bagudu said: “Today, the market power of Amazon or Google determines what I buy. When COVID unfortunately struck the world, we saw data companies that were showing data about the movement of people. And it just shows that in a way, sorry to use this word, maybe data imperialism is still very active in the sense that some companies or some countries have an undue advantage when it comes to data generation and the way that data is presented.”
“So I understand that we also need to recognize this and to compensate for it so that we are also using data in a way that we are telling our story.”
According to him, all the data generated from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) are independent of government influence and are as such reliable enough to avoid miscommunication.
He noted, “The sanctity of data is the watchword in Nigeria under President Bola Ahmed. We have recognized it as a government and given independence to the National Bureau of Statistics.
“We have never sought to interfere in any way, shape, or form with the coordination, timing, and even where some of us from an intellectual perspective want to engage in methodology debate, we make sure that we say it openly and transparently so that there will be no miscommunication as to what we are doing,” Bagudu said.
In his goodwill message, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Education Manager, Mr. Jutaro Sakamioto said education is proven as “one of the most important investments.”
According to him, it does not only empower children and youth with the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in the labour market and society but also drives economic and social development in the country.
He added: “This is the reason why so many countries in the world put education as the top national priority. The potential for education investment is particularly high in Nigeria, where the child population is increasing at a rapid pace.
“Nigeria is grappling with the education challenges owing to its huge number of out-of-school children and poor learning results,” Sakamioto said.
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