Nigeria plans to conduct census of commercial, industrial businesses

The Federal Government has planned to conduct a census of all businesses in the country, to ensure accurate statistical representation, operations and contribute to policy-making for national development.

The Minister of State, Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mr Clem Agba, disclosed this at the Training of Trainers (ToT) workshop organised by National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) for National Business Sample Census (NBSC) in Abuja.

Agba, represented by the Permanent Secretary, Mrs Olusola Idowu, said the training was taking place at a time of increased demand for comprehensive, accurate and reliable statistics.

“There is no doubt that the conduct of a national census of commercial and industrial businesses will help to increase the quantum and the quality of statistics required for positive combination, plan, monitoring and evaluation of government programmes and projects.

“This is critical especially at this point that Nigeria is in the process of designing a medium-term and a prospective development plan tagged “Nigeria Agenda 2050”.

“The essence of achieving the present administration’s reform agenda and other development programmes, such as the Sustainable Development Goals and Africa Agenda 2063, can only be realised through the use of time-bound and accurate data.

“Thus, it is our expectation that the experiences which will be shared during the workshop, the resolutions and agreements which will come out of this will help in a great extent to strengthen the existing systems of statistical production in Nigeria.”

The minister explained that the current administration had the mandate of the bureau at the centre of its agenda, which it was determined to achieve, adding that the ministry would provide the necessary support the bureau needed aimed at its repositioning and strengthening to cope with its budget challenges in order to ensure its sustainability.

He urged the NBS to ensure effective and optimal utilisation of the resources available so as to achieve the purpose for which the project was designed.

The minister also encouraged the participants to come up with feasible ways of improving the delivery of good statistical information for informed decision.

The Statistician-General of NBS, Mr Yemi Kale, said that the census had not been conducted for over two decades due to paucity of funds, stressing that the census was conventionally conducted every five years, as recommended by the United Nations Statistical Commission.

Kale, however, said the training would equip the personnel to train the data collectors to ensure they were equipped with the knowledge and processes of the survey or census.

According to him, the Training of Trainer, or ToT as we commonly call it, is an important stage in the data production process in the sense that it jointly serves as a publicity event for the business census.

He noted that everyone, including individuals, households, business owners, organisations as well as policymakers at all levels need to be fully aware and support this exercise for it to be truly successfully.

The statistician-general said that pre-test and pilot exercises were conducted to test the bureau’s readiness and plans for the census.

He revealed that initial Pilot was conducted in June this year, just after the lockdown was lifted, while a second was conducted in late August to address challenges and issues exposed by the first pilot.

He added that both were conducted in Lagos, FCT, Kaduna, Abia, Bauchi, Oyo, Rivers and Kano states.

He hinted that the country had “been digitally carved into manageable segments and mapped out appropriately with numberings across all local governments and states.

He stated further that this was done to help field managers assign work to the field personnel adequately and also help enumerators identify and locate the working areas to collate data.

The Project Coordinator, Mr Yemi Adeniran, said the census would help the nation address the challenges and bridge the gap of inadequacies and inconsistencies in commercial and industrial business statistics.

Adeniran added that this survey will serve as a benchmark for updates of subsequent commercial and industrial sector statistics in the country.