The Man Who Almost Doubled Nigeria’s GDP

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The CGD Podcast

Episode: The Man Who Almost Doubled Nigeria’s GDP
Date: April 7, 2015
Host: Rajesh Merchandani (Center for Global Development)
Guests:

• Dr. Yemi Kale – Chief Statistician of Nigeria, Head of National Bureau of Statistics
• Professor Morten Jerven – Simon Fraser University, Author of "Poor Numbers"

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Overview

This episode explores Nigeria’s dramatic GDP recalculation—an 89% jump in the official figure after the country rebased its GDP. Host Rajesh Merchandani interviews Dr. Yemi Kale, who oversaw the process, and Prof. Morten Jerven, a leading researcher on African economic statistics. The discussion delves into the causes and consequences of the GDP revision, the quality of statistical data in Africa, and the broader implications for policy, investment, and the independence of statistical offices.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Shocking GDP Recalculation

• Nigeria’s GDP rose by 89% in 2014 due to updating the base year for economic calculations from 1990 to a more recent year.
• Immediate Reactions and Process:
  • Dr. Yemi Kale describes mixed feelings—both “apprehension” and a need for rigorous validation involving staff, the IMF, World Bank, and African organizations.

    • “The first time I saw those numbers, I got very, very worried actually...I went down to the department. I had to be extremely sure.” – Dr. Yemi Kale [01:31]

• The process' delay was rooted in ensuring accuracy for the first GDP rebasing in over two decades.

2. Old Data, Old Problems

• Nigeria used 1990 as its GDP “base year” until 2014, meaning all growth and prices referenced outdated economic structures.
• Prof. Jerven notes that Nigeria isn’t unique: “A decade or two old base year is not that unusual” in African countries.
  • He draws comparisons to Tanzania and Ghana’s earlier rebasing events, often missed by the international community.

    • “When they changed from 1980s base year to a 1992 base year...no one was paying attention.” – Prof. Morten Jerven [03:08–04:27]

3. Global Relevance and Changing Norms

• Even developed countries, like the UK, have revised GDPs by including activities like prostitution and drug trades, illustrating that GDP is a flexible, evolving international standard.

  • “Any European Union country that needs a little boost to their GDP, look no further than your illegal activity.” – Prof. Morten Jerven [05:53]

4. Statistical Attention and African “Reawakening”

• Post-rebasing, demand for accurate African economic data is rising—from investors, policymakers, and governments.

  • “Investors do not want to invest in an area they don’t understand...To do that you’re going to have to provide me with better quality data.” – Dr. Yemi Kale [06:44]

• The drive is mutual: investors require transparency; African governments need data to attract investment, creating virtuous pressure to upgrade statistical practices.

5. The Challenges of Keeping Statistics Up-to-date

• Prof. Jerven emphasizes the difficulty of maintaining momentum for accurate, updated statistics. It requires continuous attention from both international organizations and domestic policymakers.
• Staff and leadership turnover, shifting priorities, and funding constraints are real obstacles.

  • “As soon as you’re done with one rebasing, you have to start planning for the next one if you’re going to be done in five years.” – Prof. Morten Jerven [09:41]

6. Building Institutional Independence

• Dr. Kale outlines efforts to institutionalize consistency:
  • Making GDP rebasing routine, not dependent on who leads the Bureau.
  • Ongoing staff training.
  • Focusing on building robust, automatic data production processes.

    • “We’re not doing a GDP rebasing just for updating numbers for now...It is building that institution so that regardless of whether Yemi Kale is the head...it becomes a normal practice.” – Dr. Yemi Kale [10:04]

7. Political Support, Funding, and Public Engagement

• Political support and funding are essential; Dr. Kale notes improved support as Nigeria’s policymakers become more engaged with statistical data.
• Key strategy: make data widely accessible and relevant (not buried in unread tomes).
  • After redesigning the website and making data available online, hits rose from 36,000 in 2005 to over 7 million by 2014.

    • “Initially, data was published in very thick...books...Now, we revamped our website...all of a sudden, everybody can get data, everybody’s in data.” – Dr. Yemi Kale [12:41]

8. Data Transparency and Political Pressure

• Dr. Kale describes how publishing negative statistics (like worsening poverty) forced ministers and policymakers to pay attention—even if it embarrassed them.

  • “One of the things I said when I took the job...if I’m going to do this work properly, I should be ready to lose my job.” – Dr. Yemi Kale [15:06]

• He recounts not being asked to falsify data, but facing anger about publishing true (politically inconvenient) data.

9. The Essential Independence of Statistical Agencies

• Prof. Jerven and Dr. Kale emphasize the importance of agency independence, integrity, and legitimacy.
  • Must resist political interference and serve the public, not just policymakers or investors.

  • “Statistical offices...must maintain their integrity and legitimacy...provide valid statistics...assert themselves...independently of other cycles.” – Prof. Morten Jerven [17:09]

10. Harnessing Technology for Better Data

• Innovative approaches: Using mobile phones to gather daily expenditure and income data from informal businesses, incentivized with phone credits.
  • Moving from paper to computer-assisted interviews (with GPS and audit features) for more reliable and verifiable data collection.

    • “Any staff that wants to be trained and stay under the tree fixing number is unable to do that because these gadgets are GPS enabled.” – Dr. Yemi Kale [19:09]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I got very, very worried actually...I had to be extremely sure.” – Dr. Yemi Kale [01:31]
• “A decade or two old base year is not that unusual.” – Prof. Morten Jerven [04:35]
• “I should be ready to lose my job.” – Dr. Yemi Kale [15:06]
• “Statistical offices...must maintain their integrity and legitimacy.” – Prof. Morten Jerven [17:09]
• “Now, we revamped our website...all of a sudden, everybody can get data, everybody’s in data.” – Dr. Yemi Kale [12:41]
• “As soon as you’re done with one rebasing, you have to start planning for the next one if you’re going to be done in five years.” – Prof. Morten Jerven [09:41]
• “If you publish data that embarrasses the powers that be, you get their attention and sometimes their funding.” – paraphased from discussion [14:55–15:04]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:05 – 01:31: Introduction, significance of Nigeria’s GDP rebasing
• 01:31 – 02:55: Dr. Kale describes reaction, process, and international validation
• 03:08 – 05:35: Prof. Jerven contextualizes Africa-wide and global statistical issues
• 06:11 – 07:39: Rising importance of accurate data for investment in Africa
• 08:04 – 10:02: Maintaining updated statistics as a recurring challenge
• 10:04 – 12:41: Institutional reforms, dissemination strategies, and growing data access in Nigeria
• 15:06 – 16:54: Personal and political pressures, transparency, and agency
• 17:09 – 18:09: The necessity of independence and legitimacy for statistical offices
• 18:09 – 20:12: Technology-driven innovations in collecting data

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Tone and Language

The episode is conversational yet expertly detailed, mixing humor (about embarrassing politicians and youthful “stupidity” in job risks) with sober analysis of development challenges. Both guests stress the technical and political complexity of economic measurement in developing countries—looking beyond headline figures to the deeper work and ongoing reforms required to ensure data accuracy and integrity.

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Conclusion

The episode reveals how vital, complex, and political the task of economic measurement is—especially in developing economies. Nigeria’s experience is presented as a case of statistical “reawakening,” but one that is fragile without continued investment, independence, and innovation. Ultimately, the story is just as much about institutional transformation and public accountability as it is about numbers.

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Transcript

[A]

Hello and welcome to the latest podcast from cgd. I'm Rajesh Merchandani. Today we are taking you back almost a year to April 2014 because that's when Nigeria made a small statistical change that led to a very big difference. It changed how it calculates its GDP and as a result its GDP estimate shot up by 89%. Nigeria suddenly became the biggest economy in Africa. Good news for Nigeria. What it uncovered though was that many African countries have very poor data. It led one economist to suggest that there was in fact a statistical tragedy in Africa. Is that still the case or is there something of a statistical reawakening going on? That's the opinion of my two guests today. The first is Dr. Yemi Kale. He is Nigeria's chief statistician and the head of the National Bureau of Statistics there. Good morning to you, Dr. Kaleh.

[B]

Good morning. Thank you for having me.

[A]

And I'm also joined by Professor Morten Yerven from Simon Frasers University in Vancouver, Canada and the author of the book Poor How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and what to Do About It. Professor Yerven, hello.

[C]

Hi.

[A]

Great to have you both here. Yemi, let's start off with, with you. I'm just trying to get my head around this idea of Nigeria upgrading its GDP by 89%. What was your reaction when you worked out that it was so much larger than had previously been thought?

[B]

I think it was apprehension. The first time I saw those numbers, I got very, very worried actually. Normally chief executives in Nigeria don't go and sit down with the, with the staff and crunch the numbers. But when I saw those numbers, I took off my jacket, I went down to the department. I had to be extremely sure because I was a bit worried about the magnitude of the increase. So we had to go and ensure that the numbers were as accurate as possible. That's why it was delayed. We had to check to ensure that everything was done properly. We had a number of consultants from the imf, from the World bank, from the African. Everybody was in on this to ensure that we got these numbers right. And the objective was that for 27 over 20 years we had not recalculated our GDP using the most up to date methodology. We wanted to make sure that this time around we got it right.

[A]

I just had this image of you in a room surrounded by people leaning over your shoulder saying, are you sure those numbers are right? Is it such a big increase?

[B]

It's actually exactly what happened. I went through all the numbers, all the Inland Revenue numbers we went, we had to go through them one after the other to ensure that these things were correct.

[A]

And the problem was that Nigeria was basing its GDP calculations on 1990 figures. So calculating prices and economic output as they would have been expressed in 1990, is that right?

[B]

That is correct.

[A]

And Morton Yevon, the fact that Nigeria's estimates of GDP were based on 1990 figures sounds astonishing, but actually Nigeria is not alone in that. It's not unusual.

[C]

No, that was very much the message of my book, my research culminating in the publication of Poor numbers in year 2013. And then I started out by asking ourselves, you know, what do we really know? These are, as Kaola says, important statistics, particularly for scholarly use, perhaps, but also in international organizations. We use them to rate and rank countries, determine who gets concessional aid, who doesn't. And scholars use this data to say, look at this country has this particular policy regime now it's doing better and so forth. Other countries should follow this or that recipe. But when I started looking into this, like, you know, I started looking into what happened in Tanzania in the 1990s. A very similar big change happened then when they changed from 1980s base year to a 1992 base year where they actually found a bigger increase. But at that time no one was paying attention. So it kind of just passed by. But at the, at the time, Ghana rebased in 2010 and between Nigerian Bureau Statistics rebased in 2014, things changed. And then we noticed that, you know, I said already and I, I was doing my field research in Abuja, I believe, just as you had taken post or, or just after.

[B]

Yemi, I was 2011, I got in August 2011.

[C]

Okay. So I was there earlier that year.

[B]

In February, before I got there.

[C]

Yeah. And I was talking to your colleagues about at that time, they also had been working on the rebasing for years. But that has, as Kalle said, has not been the most important thing for the statistical office to do. There are other things to do, but in other countries as well, if you start looking around, having a decade or two old base here is not that unusual. It's also maybe worthwhile to remind readers a little bit, or not that listeners, sorry, who don't know exactly what the benchmark and rebasing is done typically in the system, like in a Norwegian statistical system. Last year is always the benchmark, the base year in which the prices are quoted. So that's called the reference year. And that is for many countries who have enough the statistical software and enough raw data to feed into that system. They can change rotating and that's the kind of standard. But other countries you don't have. Well such a sophisticated method is not justified by the amount of raw data you get in.

[A]

And this is an issue that affects also rich countries, not just developing countries and poor countries. I mean I remember last year I think the UK also recalculated its GDP by adding in economic activity dependent upon prostitution and drugs.

[C]

Exactly.

[A]

And increase its GDP as a result of that.

[C]

Yeah, that's the big go to any European Union number country that needs a little boost to their gdp. Look no further than your illegal activity. It's important to remember that GDP is kind of an international agreed upon boundary, a production boundary and it needs updating at certain times.

[A]

So now that Nigeria has re based Yemi and Ghana has done so as well, do you get the sense that in terms of data collection amongst African countries things are getting better?

[B]

I think it is. I think like I've mentioned many times, the attention on Africa and African data has increased significantly. People are asking more questions in the process, probably embarrassing certain governments and they are forcing them to actually get their act together.

[A]

And why are they more interested do you think?

[B]

I think people are looking at the continent as I think investment opportunities across the world are getting smaller and smaller. One of the fewer place, probably the only place that has not been fully tapped into is the African continent. And investors do not typically don't want to invest in an area they don't understand. And of course these African countries themselves want the investment to come into their country. So it's like an agreement that the investor says look, I need more data on your country to come in with my billions of dollars. But to do that you're going to have to provide me with better quality data in what quantity. And the Nigerian, the African countries are saying well if that's what you need to put much needed foreign direct investment into our countries would improve our statistical offices. So you can do that. So I think it's an arrangement that works very well on both sides.

[A]

Now you guys wrote a joint paper in which you talked about Nigeria as having perhaps something of a statistical reawakening And I think we've seen that in the GDP results numbers going up so much. But Morten, do you think or how much of a challenge is it for countries say like Nigeria or any countries to once they've re based once to keep up to date?

[C]

Well that is one of the key challenges. Not only both the Ghana and Nigeria case is also showing beneath when we Start discussing this story about the long time process about it as well. It's also revealing how long it just takes just to get the idea, get the technical assistant team and so forth to get this together. Yemi as well talked a lot about the need for validation through other international organizations and so forth that make sure that at least African Development Bank, IMF and the World bank informally signs onto it. That also means that if there is a short cut in, maybe the IMF is not so interested, maybe they need to target capacity building resources elsewhere, then maybe that can go back into the back burner and so forth with the stories we talk about as well in that issue we also write about Liberia and we also write about Zimbabwe in, in which this process is not yet. They haven't been able to do so yet. And we started about talking about Ghana. They have a base year now for that seemed relatively new and fresh in 2010, but that's five years ago now they have a base year which is close to a decade old again. And so to keep the continuous attention of international organizations, to keep the continuous attention of the domestic policymakers is a big challenge. And it also relates to, you know, a challenge. I would, I'm not speaking on behalf of Caleb, but I would imagine one of the challenges is this kind of turnover of staff, turnover of international experts. Suddenly there is a desk economist at imf, World bank who's very interested in getting this in order. Then this guy disappears and you have to restart and so forth like that. And I think that to keep a continuous improvement about this, because as soon as you're done with one rebasing, you have to start planning for the next one if you're going to be done in five years.

[A]

Yeah. Are you planning for the next one?

[B]

Yes, I think we're already actually planning for the next one. I think the key point here is consistency. And this is why I think there's nothing like ensuring the independence of the Statistical office both in terms of funding to produce the data as well as disseminating that data so that continuity, what we are focusing on is not doing a GDP rebasing just for the sake of updating numbers for now. It is building that institution so that regardless of whether Yemi Kale is the head of the organization as well, it becomes a normal practice, automatic. That is done. That's what we're trying to do with the reforms that we are doing in the statistical office, not just for rebasing. I think rebasing probably created the most noise because of the magnitude of the Change. But there's a lot of these things that we put in place that makes sure that the process is automatic regardless of who comes to head the mbs. It's something that is just done. The process of training and retraining our staff in different areas continues independently of what is going on with the policymakers and so on. So, yes, we are committed to changing our base here. This year we're actually going to start. We just finished the last one last year. This year we already started the process of collecting data so that we can move the base year from 2010 to 2015 in 2016.

[A]

And that presumably requires political support and funding.

[B]

It definitely requires political support and funding.

[A]

Do you have that?

[B]

Well, we're in between two. Currently in between two different administrations.

[A]

So you've had it up to now.

[B]

I've had it up to now. I have no reason to believe that I would not going forward. And the reason is that we've created a situation where policymakers are ridiculously interested in data. You can tell by the number of committees or strategic teams that are formed and they always insist the statistics office must be part of it. In the past, there was nothing like that. The Economic management team, the Central Bank's Monetary Policy Committee, all the strategic teams set up by the President are now insisting that the Statutes Office must be a part of it. I think it's a good dissemination strategy. One of the first things I did to get attention when I came in, nobody was interested in what the Statistics office. A lot of people did not even realize in the country that there was any such thing as a statistics office.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

You mentioned some ridiculous statistics about how Your website in 2005 had 36,000 hits in the whole of Nigeria. And then in 2017. Thanks your. Yeah. And outside, of course. And then thanks to your efforts in 2004, it was something like 7 million plus hits.

[B]

Yes. Because we changed the strategy. Initially, data was published in this very thick. Should I call them journals or books with 500 pages, very heavy documents. And because you can't disseminate it across the country, so you spend a lot of money producing data and packaging it, then you don't have any money to disseminate it because they're heavy and expensive. So they sit down in the office. So what I did was change the strategy. I said, look, we're in the age of technology. We're not publishing these big textbooks. Nobody gets to see them and they cost a lot of money. We're revamp our website, create a data portal, throw everything in there and ensure that the website was strong enough to receive what data we are publishing. And all of a sudden, everybody can get data, everybody's in data. It also helps to embarrass people. One of the first indicators I published was poverty, which was extremely negative in terms of policymakers. So I got their attention because I sent it to the media and the media, the front pages. Poverty worsens by whatever it is. And of course, everybody's talking about it. And suddenly my policymakers are saying, where is this guy? We need to talk to you. What did you just publish? So suddenly they're inviting me to explain and they're now paying attention and everybody's now interested in what the statistics office is doing. We might see some other interesting data. Let's log on to their website, maybe find something else on unemployment and so on. Because of that, people now started paying attention. People started writing articles on whatever data they saw on the website. And government now started getting a little bit uncomfortable with the Statistics Office. And to make sure that they knew, they knew what we are doing, they put us on every single committee so we could brief them. Imagine how embarrassing it is for a minister to go to an international conference and the media ask him, oh, this data was just released by Statistics Office. What do you have to say about it? And he's thinking, was that data released? So, of course, because he didn't want to be embarrassed, they have to force me to join their committees so that I'm giving them regular updates on. Well, this has just been released. This is what it means. You go find a way to spin it if you need to spin it. But this is the information. We're releasing it in a couple of days and everybody's on the same page. So I think that also helps in getting people to pay a lot of attention. And as a result, the funding for our status office went up by over 1000% within two years.

[A]

But you had to embarrass the ministers in order for that to happen?

[B]

Well, I wasn't aiming to embarrass ministers, I was aiming to disseminate data. Right. I think it was a very.

[A]

But you knew what was going to happen if you published it?

[B]

Oh, yes. I think one of the attempts. One of the things I said when I took the job with my team is that, look, if I'm going to do this work properly, I should be ready to lose my job. So I went in with that mindset that, look, I could get removed for this and I'm just going to. Maybe it's a bit of Youthful exuberance or stupidity. But I went in that way anyway and said, look, for this work to be done properly to get the data right, it's going to have to be published.

[A]

Did you ever have any ministers who shall remain nameless calling you up and saying, could you make the statistics look like this please?

[B]

Oh, no, no, no, I didn't get those ones. I got the ones that were upset that I made the statistics look particular. But I didn't get anyone saying, why don't you change it to something else? It's more a case of how dare you publish this information that makes me look like I'm not working. And I'm saying things like, well, your excellency, I published it because it's my job to do in line with the mandate of my organization. Without taking you into consideration. I've had a governor call me and after some poverty number was released to the press, a member of the press asked me, how do I feel this particular state governor will feel considering he had elections in a couple of weeks. I didn't even have a clue that there were elections coming up in the state. And I leaned over and said, are there elections in this state? Say yes. Well, of course the governor called and said, are you trying to get me to lose my seat? And I said, no, I'm not. We have an advanced data calendar and we published our data in line with that calendar without paying any attention to whether or not whatever you are doing. So of course he got upset and luckily for me, he won the election. So I guess we became friends afterwards.

[A]

Fascinating. Morton, something that Yemi is talking about. There is, I think really at the crux of this and that is the importance that statistical offices in countries are independent, maintain their integrity, independent and are.

[C]

Able to maintain integrity and legitimacy. And that means and also be able to provide valid statistics. It also means that they have a certain social power, a legal power to assert themselves and do this independently of other cycles. The story which Karl is presenting to us for now seems like a virtuous positive circle that we hope may continue. But there are also, you know, radical challenges ahead, even if we now know much more about income and growth in Nigeria as well. There is a challenge, of course, to have a statistical system that's flexible to rapid economic fluctuations with the Naira going up and down, petroleum prices dropping. So we have to be careful that we're not just focusing on let's give the big benchmark fix, let's give the investors what they need. We need a continued way of having a way that Nigerian Bureau of Statistics delivers data that is useful for the citizens of Nigeria.

[B]

I think add to this, I think in line with what Dr. Martin said, I think that we have taken advantage of improvements in technology in getting data. For example, we have one of the probably the highest subscription levels in terms of mobile phone usage. So what we do now, Nigeria has like you said, has a very huge informal sector. They are not really plugged in, they are household based businesses and so on. And that's where most of the information was lacking. How do you get this data? From the woman who sells stuff on the small corner shop on the side of the road. So what we did is we take advantage of the fact that they all have mobile phones. We get their numbers, we give them the incentive to send us the daily information on their expenditure and their income, revenues and so on. Maybe at the end of the week you give them some free top up card and say okay, once you send us this information on what you spent today, you get X dollars for top up. And because of that we're now getting, we don't have to actually go deep into the rural areas. We can actually get her to break down her expenditure and so on. The same way using technology to improve the collection of data we are moving from from 100% paper based process to computer assisted personal interview devices. So our staff now go into the field. Any staff that wants to be trained and stay under the tree fixing number is unable to do that because these gadgets are GPS enabled. You now set up what we did audit department and the audit department job is to randomly select some of those records call the because the numbers of the respondent is there. I called them and said did you see Mr. Or Mrs. A today? He claims that he collected this information from you. Now if the answer is I don't know who that is then that staff gets into a lot of trouble. And now since the staff realize that that is happening then they take the work more serious. Data becomes more accurate.

[A]

I think I would probably not want to work for you but it sounds like you don't.

[B]

I think you will love it.

[A]

Sounds like you've done a great job. We're going to leave it there guys. Dr. Yemi Kale, the head and sounds like the hero of Nigeria's National Bureau of Statistics and Professor Morten Yevon, the author of Poor how we are Misled by African Development Statistics and what to Do About It. Thank you both very much indeed for joining me this week.

[B]

Thank you. Thank you.

[A]

I'm Rajesh Merchandani you can read much more about their work and our work on collecting data on our website, www.cgdev.com. and of course, join me again for the next podcast from cgd, the center for Global Development.