The 2023 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, has warned that politicising the data from the National Bureau of Statistics would be counterproductive.
In a statement issued by his media office on Thursday, the former Vice President emphasised the importance of accuracy in data and statistics for development purposes.
On December 17, the National Bureau of Statistics disclosed that Nigerians paid a total of N2.23tn as ransom over the 12 months between May 2023 and April 2024.
The NBS also released its latest Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey, revealing that an estimated 51.89 million crime incidents occurred across Nigerian households during the reference period.
This statistic highlighted the widespread nature of crime and the growing concerns surrounding security in Nigeria.
However, on Thursday the NBS refuted reports that Statistician-General of the Federation, Adeniran Adeyemi, was summoned for questioning by the Department of State Services regarding the release of the ransom payment survey report in Nigeria. The NBS also said the NBS website was not hacked, contrary to the claim in the media report (not by The Punch).
In response, Atiku stated that the timing of the alleged hack, occurring shortly after the release of troubling security statistics, was suspicious.
The statement read, “The unprecedented claim that the website of the National Bureau of Statistics has been hacked is an unpleasant development that adds up to the bad tidings that have characterized the President Bola Tinubu administration.
“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.”