The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has commenced training on the Nigeria Living Standard Survey (NLSS), which would measure the impact of the government’s policies on social welfare.
Prince Adeyemi Adeniran, the Statistician General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer, NBS stated this at the opening of the training for its staff nationwide in Ibadan on Monday.
He said the event was to kick-start the training of enumerators who would implement and collect data on the Nigeria Living Standard Survey.
According to him, the survey is used to compute Nigeria’s poverty index and poverty rate. The last round was conducted in 2018/2019, and the result was released during the COVID-19 lockdown period. This provided the first official estimates of poverty and welfare in Nigeria after almost a decade.
Adeniran charged the participants with focus and discharged their duties with due diligence.
“This training is one of the routine activities in our survey implementation, but this one, starting here today, is slightly different.
“It is different in the sense that, the manner and way in which the program has been carefully and meticulously designed, has been done with the aim of not only equipping you for the survey but also with the aim of giving you a broader understanding of the concept of poverty and living standard measurement.
“This has been done deliberately and is in line with management’s renewed resolve to enhance the technical capacity of staff across the Bureau,” he said.
The NBS boss said the NLSS would follow up on the one done in 2018/2019, adding that significant improvements have been made to the questionnaire for this round.
“With the addition of new modules and the removal of the community questionnaire from the last round, which has made for a more streamlined instrument.
“Some of the new additions include modules on Remittances, Migration and Absentee Household members, Migration Aspiration, Social Cohesion, Petrol Subsidy, and also Subjective well-being,” Adeniran said.
Also, the World Bank Representative, Kelvin McGee, commended NBS and its staff for providing good, accurate, and quality data and assured the bureau of the World Bank’s support throughout the period for NLSS.
He said, “NBS is more than equipped to handle the survey very successfully.”
Earlier in his address, Mr Ishaku Maigida, the project coordinator for the field Services and Methodology Department at NBS, said the Living Standards Survey generally measures a country’s population’s living conditions.
“It also provides essential information for the production of a wide range of socio-economic and demographic indicators, including for benchmarking and monitoring of Sustainable Development Goals, monitoring progress in population’s welfare and measuring the impact of various government policies on households,” Maigida said.
