NBS, presidency align to deepen data innovation, governance transparency
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By Progress Godfrey, Abuja
In a bid to improve governance and accountability, the Presidency and the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday reaffirmed their commitment to using data-driven innovations to guide policies and enhance transparency across government operations.
Delivering a Keynote address at the 2025 African Statistics Day celebration, Special Adviser to the President on Policy and Coordination, Hadiza Bala Usman, lauded the evolving role of data from a technical asset to a strategic national resource, noting that without it, nations risked losing their way on the path to sustainable development.
The president’s aide who also heads the Central Results Delivery Coordination Unit (CRDCU), stressed that modern, effective governments depend on data to determine resource allocation, while businesses use it to assess opportunities, and citizens use it to hold leaders accountable.
She said the theme, “Leveraging Innovations in Data and Statistics to Promote a Just, Peaceful, Inclusive and Prosperous Society for Africans’. was apt, adding that the presidency has placed evidence-based decision-making at the heart of the administration’s Renewed Hope Agenda.
She emphasised that technological advancements and innovations have raised citizens’ expectations, prompting demands for greater accountability.
“As a result, governments now need to make faster, fairer, and more defensible decisions, which traditional, paper-based survey systems can no longer sustain,” she stated.
The Special Adviser detailed how innovation translates into tangible benefits, such as using digital data collection to reduce human errors and employing satellite imageries and drone mappings to assess farmland productivity or monitor environmental changes in real time.
”Through AI and machine learning, we can now detect complex patterns that help predict disease outbreaks, track inflation, identify poverty hotspots, and cluster communities for targeted interventions. Innovative data gathering now provides the capacity for pro-active governance,” Ms. Usman said.
She praised the NBS for consistently modernising the way data is produced, analysed, and disseminated, integrating automation, digital tools, and advanced analytics, pointing to the strategic alignment between her office and the NBS since last year.
”Since early 2024, when strategic engagements between the Office of the Special Adviser to the President on Policy and Coordination and the Central Results Delivery Coordination Unit (CRDCU), and the NBS started, we have worked closely with the Statistician-General and his team to align statistical outputs with national delivery priorities,
“Together, we have strengthened data partnerships, enhanced technical capacity, bridged key sectoral data gaps, and advanced efforts to ensure that timely, high-quality statistics underpin government performance tracking and decision-making across the Eight Presidential Priority Areas — reflecting our shared commitment to accountability, transparency, and measurable results, she added.
The Statistician-General of the Federation, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, affirmed that statistics are the silent architects of development and that without credible data, navigating governance is like being in the dark.
He acknowledged the rapidly changing world and the digital revolution that has opened new frontiers for statistical development, citing tools such as satellite imagery, big data analytics, and real-time dashboards.
At the NBS, he confirmed that these innovations are being embraced with vigour, with recent initiatives including the deployment of Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) and the incorporation of GIS data into agricultural and environmental statistics.
He stressed that these advances are not merely about efficiency but are fundamentally about equity and inclusion.
Prince Adeniran highlighted the importance of governance statistics in promoting transparency and accountability. He noted the Bureau’s active role as a steering committee member of the Praia Group on Governance Statistics, an initiative established by the UN to develop harmonised tools and methodologies.
”To promote justice, we must collect data that exposes inequality. To foster peace, we must use data to understand the root causes of conflict. To ensure inclusion, we must disaggregate data by gender, age, disability, ethnicity, and geography.
“Our participation in the Praia Group’s field-testing of the Participation module has highlighted the importance of combining survey data and electoral administrative data to understand voter behaviour and governance outcomes,” he said, noting that this initiative has strengthened the Bureau’s data governance framework.
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