12m Jobs: Garba Shehu Kicks As NBS Yemi Kale Refutes His Claim

The Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, has reacted to the criticism that trailed his claim on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily on Monday that the current administration has created 12 million jobs since 1015.

Mr Shehu was reacting to a question by the host of the programme who had asked him to clarify data from the Nigerian Bureau Statistic (NBS) indicating that millions of jobs have been lost since President Buhari assumed power in 2015.

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The presidential aide, however, faulted the NBS data, arguing that even the Statistician-General of NBS, Dr. Yemi Kale, had admitted in the past that the agency does not take account of non-white collar jobs created under Buhari’s government.

Reacting to Shehu’s submission, however, Mr Kale took to his verified Twitter account (@sgyemikale) to refute the presidential aide’s claim.

“Assuming what U claim was said was actually said then I make it very clear that Neither the statistician general nor NBS ever made any such admission at anytime to anybody and the unemployment computations does take into account all sectors, age groups &both rural & urban areas,” the Statistician-General said in response to a tweet by another twitter user who called his attention to Mr Shehu’s claim that he had “admitted to the FG that his unemployment data was misleading as it did not take account jobs created outside the formal sector; that 12 million jobs were created by the rice farmers association.”

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But speaking on the criticism that trailed his remark on the TV Programme as wells as Dr Kale’s rebuttal of same, Mr Shehu took to his Facebook page to defend himself.

He said, “There is nothing wrong with what I said on Sunrise, Channels this morning. I spoke about the very bright picture of jobs creation by the Buhari administration Mr Yemi Kale gave last week. That impressive report on jobs created in agriculture showed that rice growing states like Jigawa, Ebonyi and Kebbi had the lowest unemployment.

“Mr. President, who had complained many times about employment figures reflecting mostly white collar jobs and therefore unfairly underplaying the millions of jobs his administration has created in the farms must have felt a sense of vindication.

“The response by the government was, go and put this out, address a world press conference to correct the wrong impression for all to know how well we are doing creating jobs. We hope there will soon be a date that press conference.”

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