The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says insecurity is hindering its efforts towards providing data for public consumption when it involves field surveys.
The Statistician-General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of NBS, Adeyemi Adeniran, said this in Keffi, Nasarawa State, on Thursday at the annual conference of the National Statistical Association.
sHe said the NBS had faced several cases of attacks on the field staff and theft of survey equipment.
He said this was increasing numbers of inaccessible areas in parts of the country where enumerators are not able to go in for data collection.
“As an example, under a school-based exercise recently undertaken by NBS, head teachers and facilitators had to leave their communities and meet up with enumerators at the headquarters of the local government for interviews to be conducted, because those communities were unsafe to visit.
“While this could be done for a school-based exercise, it’ll be impractical to do under a household-based or establishment-based survey.
“All these disruptions to field operations, when carefully considered, can result in significant additional costs to the budget, and heavily impact on the lean finances within the system. So, in direct terms, you are looking at the safety of lives and equipment, disruptions to the field processes which have significant financial implications and possible data quality issues, if not properly checked.”
Chairman, National Population Commission, Nasir Isah Kwarra, admitted that insecurity might have limited impact on the outcome of the 2023 census.
He said the commission was working with security agencies and traditional rulers to ensure a smooth run of the exercise.