The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has expressed readiness to partner with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to strengthen the collection, management, and use of data for national development.
By Emmanuel Oloniruha
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has expressed readiness to partner with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to strengthen the collection, management, and use of data for national development.
The commission added that the anticipated partnership was also for key services that would be beneficiary to Nigerians.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, gave the assurance when he received the Statistician-General of the Federation, Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, who paid him a courtesy visit on Tuesday in Abuja.
Yakubu, who noted that the meeting between both agencies was first of it kind, added that it was also significant in harnessing institutional strengths for national development.
He said that while the NBS managed the nation’s largest official database on all aspects of national life, INEC maintained the most extensive database of adult citizens for elections, safeguarded by law and in compliance with the National Data Protection Act.
“Today’s meeting focuses on how NBS can leverage on the commission’s network of locations for electoral services, for the benefit of citizens beyond elections, which only happen once in four years or as the need arises.
“You may recall that following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago, we worked in synergy with the Presidential Task Force (PTF) and the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
“We synergised by deploying some of our vehicles which are national assets to facilitate infection prevention and control, contact tracing and surveillance.
“We are always willing to partner with national agencies within the confines of the law, while maintaining our independence.
“We regard our partnership with NBS in this context,” Yakubu said.
However, he urged the NBS to extend its statistics publications and public engagement with stakeholders, to the state of public buildings, with the aim of improving them for electoral services.
According to INEC chairman, most polling units and ward collation centres nationwide were located in public buildings, majority of them in state primary and secondary schools.
He said that over the years, stakeholders, especially the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and groups representing the community of persons with disability, have appealed to the commission to improve these facilities.
The INEC boss appealed for the provision of electricity and water for ad hoc staff, as well as access facilities such as ramps for citizens with special needs, during elections as well as electoral activities such as voter registration.
“We urge the NBS to add these concerns to the statistics on the state of public facilities that you periodically publish and in your engagement with constitutional bodies such as the National Economic Council (NEC) in which all state governors in Nigeria are members.
“Let these facilities, which train our youths at the foundation and intermediate levels of the education system, be beneficiaries of the widely proclaimed dividends of democracy,” Yakubu said.
He further urged stakeholders to explore INEC’s Atlas of Electoral Constituencies and Electoral Facilities Locator (EFLoc) both available on the commission’s website, as reliable resources for mapping electoral infrastructure across the country.
Speaking earlier, Adeniran said that the visit was for the bureau to collaborate with INEC to ensure that available data within Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) were harmonised and available for national and institutional usage.
He commended INEC’s diligence and transparency in managing Nigeria’s electoral process and pledged that the NBS would work with INEC to make its data, including those on the ongoing CVR, available to citizens, especially those at the grassroots.
“The core mandate of the NBS is to warehouse all official data for the country, so that we can make those data available to the public and to government to do their work, to make programmes and to formulate policies.
“This is the essence why we are here. We came to collaborate with INEC to see how we can synergise between INEC and the NBS for the achievement of our core mandate.
“Working together, we will produce results. We have seen a lot of good things that INEC has been doing over the years.
“They have substantially improved the photos registered. They have been transparent in their processes.
“If you go to their website, you will see a lot of data that they have generated that are out there.
“We are going to work with them, to see how we can make this data more accessible to the citizens at the grassroots,” he said.
Adeniran disclosed that NBS was developing an Integrated System of Administrative Statistics (ISATS) to enable seamless sharing of real-time data with partner institutions and pledged to extend this system to INEC.
“This collaboration will ensure that vital data from INEC becomes part of the national statistical architecture, while INEC can also access data from other MDAs for planning and operational purposes,” he said.(NAN