The Critical Role of Data in Nigeria's Development: An Assessment

Abstract

Development engineering is a strategic interest for many economies in view of its potential to deliver resources for national development. It requires critical real time data to craft and deliver a development plan. This paper was conceived as a response to the near circle struggle of Nigeria with non-availability of basic data for delivery of public programmes. The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, the lockdown that followed in March 2020 and, the need to deliver material assistance to the poorest of the poor across Nigeria, brought to the fore the need to have reliable database of citizens in Nigeria. Real names and residents of persons became very useful in contacts tracing, but these were lacking. It was equally discovered that many Nigerians falsify record just like the government to have advantage. Nonetheless, the work noted that change is possible. The Government was encouraged to conduct census which was due since 2016, because census data is the nucleus of development planning. Directors of BPRS at the 774 Local Government Areas in Nigeria were prompted to reactivate one of their core mandates, namely, information gathering from the communities. The channel of data flow from local governments to the NBS was seen as a crucial screening process than a curse.