Opportunities, Challenges and Building Partnerships for Official Statistics in the Era of Big Data in Nigeria.

Abstract

Official Statistics are produced, collated, and disseminated by the federal governments of Nigeria through the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS). These data are almost invariably nationally representative, because they are obtained from complete censuses or very large-scale national sample surveys, and they usually seek to present definitive information conforming to international definitions and classifications or other well-established conventions. The impersonal characters of official statistics, and their resistance to innovation, stand in sharp contrast to statistics and data-sets from other sources such as, internet, social media, academic research, market research, independent research institutes, and commercial organizations. In our modern world more and more data are generated on the web, social media and sensors in the ever growing number of electronic devices surrounding us but despite this unprecedented growth, much of the value of data is still untapped, waiting to be realized. The volumes of data and the rate at which these data are produced have led to the concept of 'Big Data'. The rise in big data should change the context in which NBS operate in Nigeria. Big Data provides opportunities to obtain timely, costless, higher precision, completeness and less burden data but in order to make optimal use of Big Data for official statistics, a number of challenges have to be addressed. This paper outlines opportunities and challenges of obtaining official statistics and presents how to build a Public Private Partnership model in obtaining official statistics in the era of big data in Nigeria.