By Benjamin Umuteme

National Bureau Of Statistics (NBS) has warned that it would not hesitate to sanction any organisation that fails to give information to its officials.

According to a statement obtained by FrontiersNews from the NBS website, the warning becomes necessary as it is set to begin the second and third quarter job survey.

"Failure to give information as required to NBS, however, attracts penalty of fine or imprisonment as stated in the Statistics Act and we intend to invoke the provisions of the law if necessary to ensure compliance including publishing names of corporations that decide to withhold information thereby violating the statistics law."

"We would want to reiterate that national development and inclusive growth is a collective responsibility, with accurate, timely and reliable data a major pre-requisite for strategic planning and development," the statement said.

With statistics showing that Nigerian economy has shown impressive growth in the last decade but national unemployment rate has increased over the same period.

According to the Statistics Agency, the survey would improve available information and data on the Nigerian labour market through the application of appropriate statistical methodology for tracking variability in the number of jobs created or lost every quarter.

The survey will cover the informal (through households)  and formal sectors in all thirty-six (36) states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT),the NBS added.

Our field officers will be visiting the selected establishments and households between 5th and 18th December 2012 to collect the required data.

"The NBS hereby solicits from establishments/households the necessary cooperation for the success of this exercise, particularly in completing the questionnaires correctly."

"In compliance with the Statistical Act, 2007, all information collected through this survey will be held in strict confidence and used for statistical and planning purposes by the Federal Government only and not the individual details of companies themselves,"NBS assured.

As a kick-off, the survey will cover two quarters, March to June, 2012 and June to Sept 2012. Subsequent surveys will cover only the preceding quarter.