Eromosele Abiodun
The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) have entered into an agreement on data collection on ports’ operations.
The two government agencies signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Abuja.
The Statistician-General of the Federation, Yemi Kale, who spoke after the ceremony described the ports as major channels of both import and export cargoes, adding that the ports remain critical to the development of the nation’s transport sector.
Kale, said the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) would lead to an increase in trading and storage activities in Nigeria.
He added that with such development, generating and disseminating more granular information on these activities would be useful to assist policymakers and managers in the sector.
Kale said such data would also provide a sound basis for operators and potential investors in the sector to make informed decisions.
He said: “The output from this effort will contribute to the growing array of statistics produced by the statistical system in Nigeria and also shed more light on the important work that you do in administering port activities in Nigeria.”
Also speaking, the Managing Director of the NPA, Hadiza Bala-Usman described the collaboration as the only way to bridge the identifiable gaps in data gathering, analysis, storage, retrieval and dissemination.
Specifically, Bala-Usman added, “The creation of joint data verification and mechanism in order to have feedback on data and output among the items of collaboration between the two agencies. In addition, I would like to specifically request the collaboration of automation of data collection.
“This is an area that we would really require support towards automation in our data collection, which would eliminate errors and also have live and up-to-date information when required.
“So I would like to specifically ask for that area of support to guide the NPA in the deployment of automation as it relates to data gathering.”
