Nigeria does not subscribe to the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS), but subscribes to the General Data Dissemination System (GDDS), which is less prescriptive and generally less demanding than the SDDS. While Nigeria has benefited from several technical missions dedicated to improving its data collection and dissemination practices, to date there has been little forward motion in this regard. There is little publicly available information documenting Nigeria's data dissemination regime or evaluating its overall compliance with best practices.

General Overview

Nigeria does not subscribe to the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Special Data Dissemination Standard, according to the IMF's SDDS website. However, the IMF's General Data Dissemination System's website does disclose that Nigeria participates in its less rigorous reporting standards. A 2007 IMF assessment noted that Nigeria subscribed to the GDDS in April 2003, when it first posted metadata on the GDDS website, and that the data has been updated twice since then, the last time being in 2006.

The Federal Office of Statistics (FoS) was given legal status with the enactment of the Statistics Act of 1957, according to the FoS website. It was reorganized in the 1960s and again in 1988. Decree 42 of 1988 mandated that every government agency establish a statistical unit. According to the FoS website, the office's primary mission is "to provide comprehensive, timely, relevant, responsive, and customer-focused statistical information relating to social and economic activities as well as living conditions of the inhabitants of Nigeria." The FoS is charged with working with all levels of government in generating administrative statistics and with coordinating the data collection and analysis done by individual government agencies. It is also mandated to promote the use of statistical standards throughout the various levels of government. Decree No. 24 of 1991 placed the responsibility for the collection of data on a range of topics, including the financial/monetary sector, in the hands of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The CBN website provides public access to this data.

In a 2007 assessment, the IMF found that "Nigeria's statistical base continues to suffer from serious deficiencies that hamper surveillance, policy design, and monitoring" (p. 57). The primary areas of deficiency are national accounts, government finance, the banking system, external accounts, and the monetary system. There is inadequate sharing among the agencies responsible for data collection and production. Computerization is in its infancy. The IMF found that the 1957 Statistical Act was obsolete, in that it does not recognize the specific data collection and dissemination requirements of a federal system. National accounts data suffer from inadequate or out-of-date source data. Nigerian authorities have worked with an IMF statistical mission to improve their performance, and the 2007 IMF report notes that some progress has been achieved. Of specific note is an improvement in the GDP methodology employed for the years 2004 and going forward. In the area of consumer and producer price indices, data is as yet not comprehensive (for consumer prices) or is simply not compiled (producer prices).

The IMF 2007 report notes that "fiscal data have historically been opaque and complicated not only by the federal structure, but also by a multiplicity of off-budget funds and by accounting practices that underestimate the actual size of public expenditure" (p. 58). Although statistical missions consulted with Nigerian authorities in 1999, 2001, and 2002, no progress had been achieved. Toward the end of that period, however, a National Committee on Government Finance Statistics (NCGFS) was formed to address identified problems. The 2007 IMF report attributed this lack of improvement to the inadequacy of the NCGFS institutional mandate and insufficient trained staff. Also contributing to the problems with fiscal data is an inconsistency in definitions and collection methodologies across sources.

The 2007 IMF report notes that the 2002 mission set forth a series of recommendations that included the expansion of the NCGFS and an increase in its staffing, and it encouraged the CBN to work on reconciling government financing data. It called for the creation of a source-data inventory, and the expansion of data coverage to include state and local government operations. It also called for the adoption of the Government Finance Statistics Manual 2001 (GFSM 2001). However, the 2007 report notes that a follow-up mission in 2003 saw little improvement in the situation in Nigeria, except in the case of the CBN. According to the 2007 IMF report, "Annual fiscal data are not reported for inclusion in the Government Finance Statistics Yearbook, but aggregated fiscal data are reported for inclusion in the International Financial Statistics, although no quarterly or monthly data on financing are reported" (p. 58).

The 2007 IMF report also indicates that problems of consistency remained in the reporting of monetary accounts. Some of this is attributed to changes at the CBN, which began overhauling its accounting practices in 2006. During this transitional period, serious distortions in the CBN's accounting data were generated. Problems with balance-of-payments data suffers from inadequate reporting of oil sector data and an incomplete surveying of non-oil enterprises, resulting in serious under-reporting of trade and private capital movement data. Data submitted by the CBN to the IMF's statistical mission exhibit significant omissions, resulting in the serious underestimation of current-account debit transactions. There has, as yet, been no attempt to apply the Data Template on International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity.

External debt data is also deficient. According to the IMF 2007 report, Nigeria established a Debt Management Office in 2000, and some improvements have been achieved since then. With the merger of the Ministry of Finance and the CBN, the loan portfolio was audited to reconcile the merged databases. The 2007 IMF report notes that "the authorities do not collect data on private sector external debt, and should work to extend the coverage of their database to include private sector liabilities" (p. 60).

The Principles

Comprehensive economic and financial data, disseminated on a timely basis.

NC

Nigeria does not yet subscribe to the IMF's SDDS, but participates in the less rigorous GDDS, according to the SDDS and GDDS websites. There is at present no publicly available information available as to Nigeria's intent to subscribe to the SDDS, or to meet its more stringent requirements.

Ready and equal access to official statistics.

NC

Nigeria does not yet subscribe to the IMF's SDDS, but participates in the less rigorous GDDS, according to the SDDS and GDDS websites. There is at present no publicly available information available as to Nigeria's intent to subscribe to the SDDS, or to meet its more stringent requirements.

Official statistics must have the confidence of their users. Transparency of its practices and procedures is a key factor.

NC

Nigeria does not yet subscribe to the IMF's SDDS, but participates in the less rigorous GDDS, according to the SDDS and GDDS websites. There is at present no publicly available information available as to Nigeria's intent to subscribe to the SDDS, or to meet its more stringent requirements.

A set of standards that deals with the coverage, periodicity and timeliness of data must also address the quality of statistics.

NC

Nigeria does not yet subscribe to the IMF's SDDS, but participates in the less rigorous GDDS, according to the SDDS and GDDS websites. There is at present no publicly available information available as to Nigeria's intent to subscribe to the SDDS, or to meet its more stringent requirements.