Experts to discuss population statistics at conference

The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Mallam Muhammad Bello, and his Budget and National Planning counterpart, Senator Udo Udoma, will this Thursday be among top government functionaries to  open the Annual Conference of the Nigeria Statistical Association (NSA), scheduled to hold in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory.
The forum, which is expected to be attended by top government functionaries in the country, representatives of the World Bank, professional statisticians from Africa and other relevant organisations and agencies, has as its theme, “National Population Statistics and Sustainable Development”.
Speaking during a pre-event media chat in Abuja, the President of the NSA, Dr. Muhammed Tumala, explained that the theme of the conference and topics slated for discussion at the forum were selected based on current global and national issues and how the use of statistics could help in mitigating the fiscal and other challenges being faced by the nation’s economy.
Tumala, who is a member of the Africa Statistical Association (AfSA) Interim Committee, hinted that apart from the opening session, which the Vice President will lead a team of government functionaries to declare open, plenary sessions had been scheduled where economic and planning experts would discuss elaborately on emerging trends in statistical data collection, processing and utilisation in all areas of national development, and policy dialogue.
“This is the 40th conference in the series of our yearly conferences being organised by the association in furtherance of our efforts to contribute our quota to national development. We have secured the assurances of key experts, including representatives of AfSA, to attend this year’s forum and make useful contributions during the plenary sessions.
“On our part, we have made adequate preparations to ensure that all participants interact in a conducive and safe environment all through the deliberations. Given the topicality of the issues slated for discussions, we are very positive that the recommendations from it would be useful to the country in our collective efforts to build a globally standardised statistical database for Nigeria.”
The NSA president urged state governments and other relevant organisations to send their officials to the conference with a view to enabling them learn from the experiences of renowned experts in statistics development processes and by so doing, facilitate the creation of Bureaux of Statistics at the sub-national levels.