Speaker Tajudeen Abbas made the case this week that Nigeria cannot hit its $1 trillion economy target without first fixing how it collects and manages data. Speaking on the matter, he argued that reliable statistics are the foundation of effective governance, economic planning, and investment decisions.
The point is a practical one. Without accurate numbers on population, trade, employment, and output, policymakers are essentially guessing, and investors are being asked to trust figures they cannot verify. That gap between ambition and information is one Nigeria has long struggled to close.
For a country already positioning itself as Africa's largest economy and a continental powerhouse, the infrastructure behind the data matters just as much as the policies built on top of it. Whether the government moves quickly enough to build that system is the question worth watching.
Originally published by Premium Times.