Jos — The Federal Government said yesterday that it has finalised arrangements with key stakeholders to conduct the Nigeria Manpower Stock and Employment Generation Survey as well as Nigeria Energy Survey as well as the National Capital Stock Survey.

This came as the government warned that any statistical data that was not sourced from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) must not be accepted as authentic data, adding that it was part of its efforts to check conflicting data .

Making these disclosures yesterday in Abuja at the National Statistical Workshop for Journalists in Jos, Chairman, Governing Board of the NBS, Ambassador Greg Ozuomba-Mbadiwe appealed to all major stakeholders to support the National Bureau of Statistics in the realization of its set goals.

Mbadiwe assured that the NBS would continue to play its statutory role as the apex agency in research and data administration.

The two-day Workshop is being organized by the National Bureau of Statistics in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Declaring the workshop open , Plateau State Governor, Jonah Jang said the state government was committed to entrenching a system that would help eliminate the falsification of information and doing things without facts and figures.

Jang said: "You are all witnesses to the fact that such practices in the past had adversely affected our development by making it difficult to determine when and where to provide essential services to the people. However, our present resolve to re-invigorate the State Statistical Agency is to help provide the state government with reliable socio-economic statistics for policy formulation, monitoring and evaluation".

Jang who was represented by his Deputy, Mrs. Paulen Tallen, expressed the need for all ministries, agencies and local government area councils to strengthen their statistical data base if poverty must be reduced.

According to him, there must be a paradigm shift on how government business must be done properly with accurate data if the country must get to where developed nations are.

He also said the state has concluded plans to reposition and strengthen its statistical agency to enable it cope with the challenges ahead.

"As a matter of policy, we are determined to ensure the production of accurate, timely and reliable statistical information that will serve as a guide for good governance," he assured.

Statistician General of the Federation, Dr Vincent Akinyosoye said that in view of the ongoing reform agenda of the Federal

Government, it had become very important for the National Statistical System (NSS) to improve on its data generation efforts, adding that the move gave rise to the design of a comprehensive National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS) for the NSS which is a five-year plan spanning over 2009 to 2013.