VISUALLY-IMPAIRED AUTHOR CALLS FOR USE OF RELIABLE DATA AS BUDGET BENCHMARK ON WORLD STATISTICS DAY 2020.

One of the highpoints of the 2020 World Statistics Day event organised by the Benue State Government in partnership with Eunice Spring of Life Foundation (ESLF), was the thought-provoking submission by one of the 110 participants, Moses Afashima, a visually-impaired author, who asked series of questions on what he called “vacillating figures” being used as benchmarks for Nigeria’s national budget and other development plans. Afashima, who faulted the use of such speculative figures, inquired: “How can we reconcile the statistics of Nigeria’s population with the reality of Nigerian budgeting system?”

“I ask because I believe that in Nigeria, we operate a budget that is based on assumption…We are also operating with a population figure that is equally based on assumption. This is because for more than 10 years we have not had a census that can be used to determine our actual population. However, current statistics show that Nigeria is a country with a population of over 200 million persons. How did we get this?”

“How do I believe this statistics because, to the best of my knowledge, we even lack the facility to collate and take into cognizance the number of persons who have died? If we take a record of the birthrate, how about the death rate? Are these figures reconcilable?”

“Because, when you look at the budgeting system in Nigeria, it is said that we have a budget of over 10 trillion naira. Is this 10 trillion a reality to the population we have in this country? How can we reconcile this?” he probed.

Afashima, who recently authored a soon-to-be-launched book, “Arrows of Secrets”, was one of the 4 Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) selected by ESLF to participate in the World Statistics Day 2020 event in furtherance of the Foundation’s drive to ensure inclusion as prescribed by Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 which is “leaving no one behind”.

In a chat with ESLF’s Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Simon Orjime, World Statistics Day, as declared by the United Nations, was first celebrated in 2010 and commemorated once in five years. The theme for World Statistics Day 2020 is, “Connecting the World with Data We Can Trust”.

#WSD2020 #DataIsLife #NBS #UNSC #SDGS