The Statistician General of the Federation (SGF) and Chief Executive Officer, National Bureau of Statistics, Prince Semiu Adeniran, has said the bureau is planning new surveys to help to curb inflation and improve welfare.

Adeniran said this while delivering his Keynote Address at the meeting of the National Consultative Committee of Statistics in Lagos with the theme, ‘The direct implication of sectorial statistics in curbing inflation’.

He said, “At the Bureau, we have been working hard to support government along these lines. Only recently, working with the World Bank, NBS launched two very important and critical household surveys, that is the Nigerian Living Standard Survey and the Nigerian Labour Force Survey.

“These two surveys when completed will provide detailed household information and insights into labour and welfare conditions in Nigeria, which are arguably two of the issues most affected impacted by inflation. NLSS will provide detailed information on household consumption, education, health, employment, housing conditions, assets, household enterprise and other key non-monetary indicators of welfare.

“On the other hand, the NLFS is a strategic survey designed to collect and analyse labour market statistics for the country, including the generally understood and widely anticipated headline unemployment and underemployment rates. While the unemployment and underemployment rates are very important figures that indicate the number of persons economically engaged, the NLFS also contains a lot more equally interesting and important information that offer useful insight into the health of the labour market in Nigeria.”

The Chairman of the Governing Board, NBS, Dr. Kabiru Nakaura, said, “The need for good and reliable statistics in every society, and across all tiers of government, for informed

decision and policy making is indisputable. Hence, it is pertinent for all countries to have established statistical agencies, such as the NBS in the case of Nigeria, whose work it is to collect, process and disseminate such statistics.”