The Ogun State Commissioner for Budget and Planning, Olaolu Olabimtan, has restated the commitment of the present administration towards creating a world-class Bureau of Statistics that would offer the government reliable and accurate data required to provide meaningful dividends of democracy for the people of the state.
The Commissioner, who noted this in Abeokuta at a two-day training for government statisticians and planners on modern methodology of data collection and gathering,
decried the unavailability of the required data for socio-seconomic development of the nation and states as very worrisome, maintaining that the two-day workshop would would be an eye opener to modern solutions for a result-based data gathering .
Olabimtan added that part of the mission of the Dapo Abiodun-led administration is to ensure that the State through the Ogun State Transformation Project (OGSTEP) improve the capacity of government officials in all sectors of the State’s economy in order to complement the building our future agenda of the government, calling on participants to become a knowledge-worker that would provide useful and relevant support towards actualisation of the State’s Development plan.
“One major problem affecting the socio- economic development of the country as a whole is that those involved in planning and gathering of data don’t know their onions ,
as this greatly have it’s toll on the people’s lives. There is no data to be measured and this calls for a great concern of all stakeholders.
“And one other thing we do in Nigeria is that we believe in doing things manually, and it is not possible to do things manually in this modern technological age.It is not business as usual and this call on all of us to do it differently for posterity sake” the Commissioner submitted.
In their goodwill remarks, the OGSTEP Project Head, Mrs. Mosun Odunsi, represented by the Consultant to the Governor on Monitoring and Evaluation, Hendrix Odigie, revealed that the training was part of the Public Service Reform effort targeted at enhancing the capacities of Statisticians on internationally recognised standards of data gathering and collection.
Odigie revealed that OGSTEP in partnership with relevant agencies of government had prepared and produced a master plan towards transforming the State’s statistical structure for continued and focused development of the State.
Also speaking, the Consultant to the Governor and Statistician-General, David Alao noted that the programme was part of the steps aimed at transforming the old Department of Statistics to a full-fledged Bureau for improved and quality service-delivery to the State, assuring of stepping down the knowledge acquired in the training to others.
