Lies, damn lies and ..........

November 30th Out and about in Abuja

Greetings, it has been an exciting week around Abuja as the capital city moved into party mode; the Carnival has been in town last weekend. I abandoned the festivities and played my usual round of footie with the lads. That in retrospect seems to have been a mistake on my part, we lost the game abysmally and I missed a great display of horsemanship and pageantry at a local Durbar. Oh yes, Colonel Gadaffi of Libya was spotted walking on the dualcarriage near Abuja, some diplomatic spat at the airport, not sure of all the detail.

Sometimes, I think back on past memories, some utterly joyful, others perhaps not so and at times look forward to life’s unknowns. In Nigeria, one out of every five children will not live beyond the age of five, or more starkly 200 of every 1000 babies born alive will not see their fifth birthday. That’s a statistic; take from it what you will.

So, let’s say an average child reaches the age of five in Nigeria, what are the likely or possible paths they will follow? Increasing numbers will go to primary school but many will drop out before reaching secondary school, not from lack of talent or drive to succeed, but oftentimes out of sheer poverty. In the 1980s Nigeria was widely regarded and recognised as having one of the best education systems in Africa, producing tens of thousands of graduates on a yearly basis, vast numbers though have chosen, by choice or otherwise to leave their country to works as doctors, engineers, lawyers and nurses around the world. So those with varying degrees of education, what are their chances of finding employment in Nigeria?

Nigerians living and working in Ireland, Europe or wherever might be surprised to know that the unemployment rate currently in Nigeria stands at 12.5 per cent or so the Federal Bureau of Statistics report here. This may be true, depending on how you define unemployment, but it is likely to be a gross manipulation of the figures or accurate perhaps if you define unemployment narrowly and exclude those living on the edges of society, those hawking goods, struggling on small farms, or the utter millions surviving in a multitude of ways but not in the formal economy.

Any idea what is the population of Nigeria? You can phone a friend, ask an audience if they are to hand or just hazard a guess. Current wisdom suggests that the population is close to 130 million. Problem is; there has not been a ‘proper’ census in Nigeria since 1963 A recent speech from the Minister of Finance quoted a population figure of 150 million inhabitants in this vast country. What’s in a statistic………. well, you can lose or gain 20 million people in the blinking of an eye.

The wonders of statistics, here is one that is likely to be true, in 2006, the Federal Bureau of Statistics reduced its workforce from 4000 to 2800, or in their words ‘disengaged’ 1200 workers. That’s 30 per cent of the workforce retrenched or is that a productivity gain of 42.85 per cent? Ponder what this may mean?

I am off to Lagos this weekend, home to millions of people, how many people, its anyone’s guess. So what’s in a statistic? A life extinguished, unfulfilled, a whole world of opportunity lost or gained, manipulation, power or just chance.

Have a good week.