The Statistician-General, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Dr. Yemi Kale, yesterday put the current rate of unemployment in Nigeria at 23.9 per cent.

He, however, disagreed with the arguments that the growth recorded by the Nigerian economy had not in any way impacted on the lives of Nigerians by way of employment generation.

Speaking to journalists in Abuja during a stakeholders' consultative forum on the production and management of Ministries, Departments and Agencies’ statistics, the NBS boss also argued that while it could be admitted that economic growth had not brought about the expected impact, it was wrong to say that no impact had been felt at all. He stressed that jobs were being created in the economy.

Dr. Yemi said: “It is impacting on the lives of Nigerians but maybe not as much or widespread as you would expect. You can't expect a Shoprite to come and hire 2,000 people in one location in Lagos and you say it doesn't impact on the lives of people.

“When you hear them expanding to other states, that is clearly a sign that they are making money and expanding their businesses. When they are expanding, they hire more people; so you can't say it's not impacting. It is impacting and jobs are being created in this economy. But the problem with jobs is that if you are generating jobs and more people are entering the job market than you can generate, you might have a problem.”

Continuing, he said: “But it is wrong to say that things are not improving. Things are improving, jobs have been created, but the challenge is how can we increase the number of these jobs to balance out?"

However, he said the quality of data being generated by the agency had improved tremendously in recent times, even as he noted that are few challenges to be addressed.

He said the significant improvement in data output had been acknowledged and commended from within and outside the country.

Dr. Yemi said despite the progress recorded in terms of data gathering in the last few years, the sector is still faced with the problems of low literacy levels, lack of appreciation for record keeping and poor understanding of the benefit of data.

According to Dr. Yemi, other challenges include low funding of statistics as well as irregular release of budgets to implement its activities.