I Was Ready To Lose My Job Under Buhari’s Govt For Releasing Accurate Statistics, Says Yemi Kale

The immediate past Statistician General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of the National Bureau of Statistics, Dr Yemi Kale, has said that he was always ready to be fired by his principal for publishing accurate results  at the NBS.

He said this on Tuesday during a monitored programme on Arise Tv- ‘Morning Show.’

Following President Muhammadu Buhari’s approval, Kale was on August 16 replaced by Simon Harry after the expiration of his tenure as the country’s Statistician General.

In May, after the Kale led NBS which is the official body that releases government economic statistics published an unemployment report which reached 33.3 per cent, the Minister of Labour and Employment Chris Ngige faulted the report as inaccurate.

Ngige had tweeted, “There has been a little confusion as to the accuracy of data generated by the NBS. So, we want to align everything tomorrow. The World Bank says the NBS methodology doesn’t conform with the global standard, especially the ILO format of arriving at such an Employment Index.”

But a day later, the Bureau accused the Minister of distorting facts and lack of confidence in the employment statistics.

Reacting on how he handled the political interference faced during his tenure, the former NBS boss said he was more focused on the mandate of his job than extending his tenure in office.

“On a serious note, when I started this job I remember mentioning to my key staff that look, if I am going to do this job, right, I must be ready to be fired.

” So, if you go to my office, or my previous office I never really settled down properly because I expected that anytime I could be removed and that was the prize I was willing to pay for trying to do the job properly.

“And I said no, there is no way for me to do the job properly if I was concerned about the job, because it will make me do things to keep my job as opposed to doing what is right.

“So, I had to convince myself that it is just a job, I am serving the country and I will serve it correctly, and I am ready to lose my job for doing the right things. Once I convinced myself, I didn’t particularly care about any political attacks, any opinion.”

Kale said he was always careful to ensure that all reports published followed the right methodology before it was put out for public consumption.

Kale said, “But in terms of political interference I dont think it is new. So I wasn’t (worried) by the different comments made by different people that did not agree. We are not supposed to publish data that is agreed by anybody, we are supposed to publish data that is correct and accurate in line with what comes out of the field.”

He said the most important issue for him while carrying out his assignments was his focus to work based on the mandate of the office.

“The mandate of the office is not to keep me in office. The objective of the office is not to extend my tenure, the objective of the office is to produce reliable, accurate data. I will do what is right, if I lose my job, I lose my job.”

Kale further revealed that the country’s budget for collecting every single data yearly was less than N100m.

But he said, in the last ten years, the amount has risen to over N1bn based on the support from the Minister of Finance Budget and National planning, Zainab Ahmed and other of his superiors.

He said the Bureau has been able to create specialised services that helped it get more funds.