Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has warned the federal government to stop politicise the data form the National Bureau of Statistic, NBS following the reported arrest of the Statistician General of the Federation by the Department of State Services, DSS, over its recent reports on the security situation in the country.
The former number two citizen spoke few days after a report released by the NBS to the effect that kidnappers raked in over N2.2 trillion from their victims within 12 months.
The NBS report also revealed 51.89 million crime incidents occurred across Nigerian households during the said period.
Following the reports, critics of the government said the revelations is a pointer to the worsening state of insecurity in the country.
The attacks on the administration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu became more intensified, following reports that the Statistician-General of the Federation, Adeniran Adeyemi, had been summoned for questioning by the Department of State Services, DSS over the issue. The NBS has denied the report.
The controversy was further exacerbated after claims that the NBS site has been hacked.
Responding Atiku, in a statement released by his office yesterday said the timing of the attack on NBS is suspicious considering its recent damning reports on the state of insecurity in the country. He said the development posed credibility problems of the NBS because Nigerians will begin to suspect any report form the agency, describing the hack as ‘unprecedented’ adding that the development is typical of the Tinubu administration.
The statement in part, “The development, which is coming on the heels of the recent data published on the website of the NBS on Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey, underscores the credibility crisis of the current administration.
“These are strange times in Nigeria, and it is hoped that the situation at hand is not an underhand attempt to pigeonhole the integrity of data majorly used for planning and development and research purposes.
“Subjecting data and statistics such as those harvested, analysed, and released by the NBS to sexing up or political considerations is counterproductive.
“That is why the claim that the website of the National Bureau of Statistics was hacked into, the very first time in its history, should be of concern to the fidelity of the stats it releases to the public.
“Moreover, the coincidence of this so-called hack, coming only shortly after the release of damning stats on security, is suspicious.
“We may be tempted to assume that every stats released by the Bureau is an outcome of a hack.”
Meanwhile, critics said the administration is obviously not happy with the NBS over the security report. The Tinubu administration has further worsened the situation by trying to do damage-control according to them.
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