A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Segun Showunmi, has called on the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) to start publishing a detailed breakdown of Nigeria’s economic and social data by state and local government, instead of relying only on national figures.
Showunmi made the call in a post on X on 11 August. He said Nigeria’s current approach, which reports most development data as national averages, hides how individual states are actually performing.
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He said Nigeria is a federation of 36 states, the Federal Capital Territory and 774 local governments, each with different economies, resources and levels of governance. According to him, national figures can hide problems in some states just as easily as they can show progress in others.
“National aggregates can conceal subnational failure just as easily as they reveal national progress,” Showunmi said.
Showunmi lists questions he wants state data to answer
Showunmi raised several questions he said should be answered with data rather than left to political argument. These include which states are driving Nigeria’s GDP growth, where poverty is falling fastest, where new jobs are being created, which states are raising more of their own revenue, and where investment is going.
He called on the NBS to create a State Performance Dashboard that breaks down major economic and social data by geopolitical zone, state and, where possible, local government.
He said the dashboard should cover six areas: economic productivity, fiscal effort, human development, investment and business climate, public finance and outcomes, and institutional capacity.
On economic productivity, he said the data should include state GDP, GDP growth, GDP per person, output by sector, manufacturing, agriculture, exports, new businesses and jobs.
On fiscal effort, he listed internally generated revenue, IGR per person, IGR compared to a state’s economic output, federal transfers, total revenue, capital spending, recurrent spending, debt and debt repayment.
On human development, he mentioned poverty, education, learning outcomes, healthcare, maternal and child health, water, sanitation and electricity.
He said public finance data should not just show how much governments spend, but what citizens actually gain from that spending.
“A budget is not an achievement. Expenditure is not an achievement. Improved outcomes are achievements,” he said.
He warns against a simple ranking of states
Showunmi warned that the NBS should not turn the data into a basic league table, since states do not all start from the same position.
He said the bureau should measure how each state is doing on its own, how it compares with similar states, and how it is changing over time.
“A state that inherited severe structural disadvantages but is improving rapidly should receive credit. A state that inherited a strong economic base but is stagnating should not be allowed to hide behind history,” he said.
He also proposed a Fiscal Dependency Ratio, which would show federal transfers as a share of a state’s total revenue, alongside a Fiscal Effort indicator to measure how much states are building their own income sources.
Showunmi said he was not against federal transfers to states, describing equalisation as a normal part of a federal system. But he said such transfers should help states overcome disadvantages, not become a permanent way of funding themselves.
He said the larger problem is accountability, since governments currently blame or credit “Nigeria” as a whole instead of facing scrutiny over their own state’s performance.
“If one state is attracting investment while another is not, let us know,” he said. He gave similar examples on education, fiscal dependency and how governments turn public resources into real improvements for citizens.
Showunmi said good statistics should be treated as public infrastructure rather than propaganda. He called on the NBS to publish the underlying data in formats that citizens, researchers, investors, journalists and civil soc iety groups can easily access and study.
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