President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the appointment of Simon B. Harry to replace Yemi Kale as the new statistician-general of the federation to head the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Yunusa Tanko Abdullahi, special adviser, media and communication, to the minister of finance, budget and national planning, stated this in a statement on Thursday.
Yemi Kale’s second term tenure of five years expired on August 16, 2021.
“Currently, Dr Harry is the Director, corporate planning and technical coordination, Department of NBS with almost three decades of statistical experience,” the statement reads.
“He joined the erstwhile Federal Office of Statistics as Statistician 11 in 1992 and rose to the position of a substantive Director of Statistics in 2019.
“In the course of his civil service career, Dr Harry has contributed to several reform initiatives including the reform of the then Federal Office of Statistics which transformed to the current National Bureau of Statistics, the reform of the Nigerian Statistical System which resulted to the creation and establishment of State Bureaus of Statistics at the sub-national level.”
Since his appointment in 2011, Kale turned the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) into a data powerhouse and one of the few agencies that changed the face of civil service in Nigeria.
He was reappointed by President Buhari in 2016 after the end of his tenure.
During his tenure, he drew the Nigerian economy closer to vision 20:2020 by rebasing the country’s GDP, capturing the new telecommunications industry, the bigger banking sector, the entertainment sector, among others.
After the rebasing, Nigeria realised that it was the biggest economy on the continent and six spots away from its goal of becoming one of the top 20 by 2020.
The results of the rebasing process were validated by a panel of local experts, including Olu Ajakaiye, Akpan Ekpo, Ganiyu Garba, Ayo Teriba, Yemi Fajingbesi, Doyin Salami and Adeola Adenikiju.
