Prominent pro-democracy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has castigated the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) “for breaching scientific methodology and accuracy of existential, real time facts in reaching a jaundiced determination of what it calls Nigeria’s unemployment rate that in their imagination has recorded a dramatic drop from 33.1 per cent reported in March 2021 to 4.1 per cent for the first quarter of 2023.”

HURIWA said in a statement on Friday that “the current unemployment data by NBS were generated as a result of intensive and well-oiled political blackmail and media propaganda orchestrated straight from the office of the President of Nigeria just to get a quick response to the groundswell of concerns, consternation and worries of millions of Nigerians about the high costs of living and the high inflation rate created by the upward review in the pump price of petrol which has had a spiral effects on the costs of foodstuffs and services in Nigeria.”

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), it would be recalled, disclosed on Wednesday, when it released its employment data for the first quarter of 2023, indicating a substantial improvement in the job market. It further stated that in Q1, 2023, 92.6 per cent of employed persons in Nigeria were in informal employment, which includes agriculture, while 89.4 per cent in informal employment that excludes agriculture.

HURIWA has however blamed the NBS for capitulating to “a well-orchestrated political propaganda from the office of the Nigerian President which has since the time of the immediate past President produced by the same All Progressives Congress, had blackmailed the National Bureau of Statistics for displaying boldness, charismatic courage and candour, frankness and for relying on credible facts and figures to draw up conclusions on the unemployment or poverty related data about Nigeria and Nigerians.”

“Appearance of this political piece of jaundiced propaganda by the Tinubu’s government through a contrived unemployment data is far removed from the realities of life in Nigeria of today,” HURIWA said in the statement signed by its national Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko.

The rights group recalled that Ajuri Ngelale, the current Special Adviser Media and Publicity to President Bola Tinubu, who was then a special assistant on media to the then President Muhammadu Buhari, had lambasted the NBS for being factually accurate and apolitical with their published statistical data just as he spared no words to discredit the work of this publicly funded agency of the central government.

HURIWA, which rubbished the most recent publication on the unemployment rate by the NBS under a new hierarchy, declared that “the NBS must have relied on voodoo and imaginary reasons when the bureau said the revised methodology defines employed persons as individuals who are working for pay or profit and who worked for at least one hour in the last seven days against 40 hours.”

“The old methodology placed a range on the working-age population- 15 – 64 years, while considering working hours between 20-39 hours as underemployment, 1-19 hrs as unemployment,” it added.

HURIWA said only someone who resides in the moon or other strange planets wouldn't know that the N1,000 paid mostly for one hour menial job can't possibly be classified as a minimum or living wage and this then calls to question what the NBS means by 1 hour employment out of seven days.

According to HURIWA, “You do not need rocket science to ascertain correctly that the true unemployment rate in Nigeria might be more than the 33 per cent recorded in 2020 when the NBS last released the labour data, as said by a statistical expert Akintunde Ogunsola, an Abuja-based financial analyst. He said many businesses in the micro, small and medium enterprise sector – a significant part of the economy – have been forced either to lay off some workers or shut down.”

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