Every 15th day of the month, across Nigeria, an unusual but powerful ritual unfolds.
Policymakers, politicians, senior administrators at federal and state levels, captains of industry, editors, professors, analysts, and students alike pause—almost in collective suspense. They are not waiting for a political speech or a policy announcement. They are waiting for data. More precisely, they are waiting for one man.Every quarter, the anticipation expands beyond Nigeria’s borders. Global news networks suchas CNN, Al Jazeera, and Bloomberg; international policymakers; multinational CEOs; rating agencies; scholars; and Bretton Woods institutions all await the same moment: the release of Nigeria’s quarterly Gross Domestic Product figures.
At the centre of this quiet but consequential global attention is the Statistician-General of the Federation and Chief Executive of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Prince Adeyemi Adeniran.
One word best captures what Prince Adeniran has entrenched at the National Bureau of Statistics: Credibility.
Credibility. Credibility. Credibility.
This is the defining legacy of what may rightly be described as The Prince of Statistics.
Building solidly on the foundations laid by his eminent predecessors—particularly Professor Vincent O. Akinyosoye, the erudite statistician who midwifed the NBS as an institution, and Dr. Yemi Kale—Prince Adeniran has taken the Bureau to a level of professional integrity, credibility and international trust that is now taken almost for granted.
Today, the credibility and reliability of data produced by the NBS is rarely, if ever, questioned.
Through sustained collaboration with respected international organisations such as the World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), UNCTAD, UNDP, UNICEF, and other multilateral partners, the NBS has achieved an unparalleled reputation for methodological rigour and transparency. Even the recent rebasing of Nigeria’s GDP—an exercise that could easily have been mired in controversy—was widely accepted by commentators, analysts, and international observers alike. That acceptance was not accidental; it was earned.
Under Prince Adeniran’s leadership, credibility is no longer something the NBS has to defend; it is something it is assumed to possess.
This credibility would not have been possible without the enlightened cooperation of the supervising minister, the Honourable Minister of National Planning, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu and the unflinching support of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The administration has granted the NBS the operational independence required to carry out its mandate strictly in line with international best practices. History reminds us that not all governments have shown such restraint—one prominent world leader famously dismissed the head of his national statistical agency simply because official figures contradicted political agenda. Nigeria, under the current administration, has chosen the wiser path.
Beyond the headline figures of GDP and Consumer Price Index (CPI)/inflation, the NBS under Prince Adeniran produces a rich array of highly valuable statistical outputs. These include International Trade Reports, Terms of Trade Reports, and numerous sectoral publications developed in collaboration with other Ministries, Departments, and Agencies. Statistics on health, agriculture, education, mining, telecommunications, finance, construction, trade, and petroleum—all are meticulously documented, analysed, and presented to inform evidencebased policymaking.
In a country often accused of flying blind, these datasets provide a compass.
Yet, there remains one critical national challenge where the intervention of the Prince of Statistics could render immense public service. It is common knowledge that Nigeria does not have a credible, widely accepted figure for daily consumption of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS).
Over the years, Nigerians have been presented with figures ranging from 70 million litres per day to as low as 35 million litres by agencies such as the NNPC and later the Nigerian
Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA).
The truth is simple: these figures lack credibility.
Given its institutional reputation, technical expertise, and independence, the NBS is uniquely positioned to collaborate with regulators in the oil and gas sector to produce a credible, transparent, and verifiable estimate of Nigeria’s daily PMS consumption. Such an intervention would not merely resolve a technical debate; it would significantly improve fiscal planning, subsidy analysis, energy security, and public trust.
Nigeria has, in Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, a Statistician-General whose work commands respect at home and abroad. In an era where data is power and credibility is currency; the National Bureau of Statistics has become one of Nigeria’s most trusted institutions. That achievement deserves recognition—and preservation.
For a nation striving to make sense of itself, the numbers finally make sense. And that is no small legacy.
Ambassador Tunde Mustapha, Abuja
tmusta@yahoo.com
