Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Budget and Planning, Mrs. Olufunmilayo Dada has enjoined Statisticians and Government Planners to evolve System-driven solutions that will add value to the government’s commitment to improving the living standard of the citizenry,

Mrs. Dada, who gave the admonition in Abeokuta at a 2-day training on "Stata Software" for Statisticians drawn from Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government, charged Statisticians and Government Planners to adopt the use of ‘Stata Software’ to analysis for development.

She described the role of Statisticians as key to national and State development, maintaining that the training would be of immense benefit to their schedule of duties, as well as provide them with opportunities to further serve the government, towards delivering qualitative dividends of democracy.

She emphasised the importance of training and re-training in the delivery of efficient service delivery, calling on the Statisticians to ensure they step down the knowledge acquired from others. He appreciated the unflinching support of the United Nations Fund Population Agency (UNFPA), to the Ministry and the State as a whole and assured of continued collaboration.

"Training and re-training of officers are important to the hearts of the present administration in the State. This programme is expected to enhance the Statisticians’ capacities with the latest technological trend on how best to analyse data for government action. It is indeed a rare privilege, and I encourage you all to take the training seriously", she added.

In his remark, the Statistician-General of the State, Mr. David Alao, said the training is one of the new methodologies of gathering and analysing data, targeted at addressing the State’s developmental objectives, calling on the participants to take advantage of the training.

Contributing, the Director, Development Partners in the Ministry, Mrs. Olufunmilola Tade added that the training would expose participants to the knowledge of the proposed estimation of the demographic dividend of the State, understand national planning and development through proper data management, among others.

Delivering a paper titled "Understanding National Planning for Statisticians in the State", the Acting Head of Statistics Department, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, who also is the Chairman of the Nigeria Local Group of Royal

Statistics Society, London, Dr. Mattew Olayiwola revealed that the rationale for the training was to address the challenges associated with the accurate and reliable gathering of data by stakeholders, noting that the "Stata Software" solution is an analytical tool for data gathering that looks at the inferences for evidence-based decision making.

One of the participants, a Senior Statistician in the Bureau of Statistics, Olakunle Muyideen, said the Software is an analytical tool that deals with figures that would be converted for use by the government in making people-centric policies, noting that knowledge gained would be applied appropriately.