The European Union, (EU) on Wednesday said that it has spent over eight million Euros to support the generation and dissemination of social and financial data in Nigeria.

The Representative of EU delegation in Nigeria, Mr. Omotunde Oni, made this known at a 2-day Stakeholders’ workshop in Abuja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the workshop was the Validation of the Compendium of Statistical Terms and Framework for Capturing Administrative Statistics in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

Oni said that the EU, under the 10th European Development Fund (EDF), was providing support to the Federal Government Public Service Reform (SUFEGOR) Programme.

Prior to the SUFEGOR project, Oni said that EU supported Statistics in Nigeria was a component of the Multi-donor Economy Management Capacity Project (EMCAP) that was implemented between 2003 and 2006.

``The EU’s contribution to the EMCAP was eight million Euros.

``The expected result of EMCAP included the generation and dissemination of social and financial data for the country as well as the facilitation of period publication and accessibility of data.

``EU is very pleased to be associated with the success of EMCAP particularly with the output of the project that was produced with the EU financing.

``Such output included the rationalisation of the former Office of Statistics which staff strength was reduced from about 12,000 to 620 after rigorous resources management exercise.

``About 340 professional staff were produced by that exercise, some of the professionals which stand out from in NBS today are products of the project,’’ he said.

According to Oni, capacity building of staff was carried out through EMCAP in form of training, re-training and study to benefit from best practices from other countries.

He said that EU was also supporting the SUFEGOR programme on the implementation of the National Strategy for the Public Service Reforms (NSPSR).

He said NBS, being the coordinating institution of the National Statistical System (NSS) in Nigeria, was one of the benefitting agencies of the programme, coordinating its statistics component.

He said that other agencies that benefitted from the programmes were, the Office of Head of Service of the Federation and the National Planning Commission.

Others are the Federal Inland Revenue Service and Bureau of Public Service Reform (BPSR), which serves as the implementing Agency.

According to him, the project supported the social sector statistics such as the formation and dissemination of all welfare education questionnaires.

He said that the EU’s support to NBS also included National Consumer Survey, Poverty Statistics, Office and Expenditure Review between 2003 and 2006.

Oni said that with the EU support and the support from other development partners, statistics development in Nigeria had improved.

``It (statistics) has improved from almost zero level in 2002 when statistics were not readily accessible to current situation where a wide range of social and economic statistics are now produced and accessible through the NBS.

`` This achievement would have not been possible without the inspiration and leadership of NBS and I want to urge you to sustain it,” he said.

Earlier, the Assistant Director, Field Services and Methodology Department in NBS, Mr Simeon Harry, said that the workshop was organised to underscore the importance of the implementation of SUFEGOR project.

Harry said that the workshop was an opportunity to critically appraise Reports of the Review of the Compendium of Statistical Terms and the Framework for producing statistics at the MDAs level.

NAN reports that SUFEGOR project is supporting the establishment of network of institutions to strength the capacity of NBS in the production.

It’s also helping in the harmonisation and dissemination of socio, economy and administrative data in the country. (NAN)

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