A new Statistician-General of the Federation has been appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari.
 
Dr Simon Harry will head the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
 
His appointment was approved on Thursday by Buhari.
 
The new NBS boss would take over from outgoing Statistician-General, Dr Yemi Kale, whose second term of five years came to an end on August 16, 2021.
 
Harry’s appointment was made known in a statement issued by the special adviser on media to the minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Yunusa Abdullahi.
 
Dr Harry was the director, corporate planning and technical coordination department of NBS before his appointment.
 
This online newspaper reports that Harry has almost three decades of statistical experience.
 
He joined the erstwhile Federal Office of Statistics as Statistician II in 1992 and rose to the position of a substantive Director of Statistics in 2019.
 
In the course of his civil service career, he has contributed to several reform initiatives including the reform of the then Federal Office of Statistics which transformed to the current National Bureau of Statistics, the reform of the Nigerian Statistical System which resulted to the creation and establishment of State Bureaus of Statistics at the sub-national level.