President Muhammadu Buhari says the recent data reeled out by the National Bureau of Statistics show that his administration is doing well.
Buhari said this on Wednesday during a Gala Night organised by beneficiaries of the government’s Anchor Borrowers Programme held at the State House Conference Centre, Abuja.
The President followed the announcement on Wednesday by the NBS that the number of unemployed persons of working age had risen to 20.9 million.
He said that statistics from the NBS had confirmed that his administration’s policies were yielding results.
Buhari said he inherited “a broken system in the agricultural sector in 2015.”
After hearing testimonies from some rice farmers, the President said, “Seeing your faces and hearing your stories give me hope. Today, we are on track to achieving an all-inclusive economy.”
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, had said Buhari had ordered the Statistician-General of the NBS, Dr Yemi Kale, to change the high unemployment statistics and reflect the rising rate of employment in the agriculture sector.
Shehu said during a recent meeting with the Federal Executive Council, Kale admitted that the NBS was only focusing on the creation of white-collar jobs and not the agriculture sector and the informal sector.
“Rice Producers Association of Nigeria made the open claim and nobody has challenged them up until the time that we speak, that they had created 12 million new jobs,” Shehu had said.
Kale, however, denied ever making such a claim.