How to tell the lies from the statistics (I)

So, to save the ordinary citizen from the mischievous use of statistics, Huff deemed it fit to teach regular folks how to do wicked statistics, hence his book, ‘How to Lie with Statistics.’Here’s how he defended his project: “This book is a sort of primer in ways to use statistics to deceive. It may seem […]

So, to save the ordinary citizen from the mischievous use of statistics, Huff deemed it fit to teach regular folks how to do wicked statistics, hence his book, ‘How to Lie with Statistics.’
Here’s how he defended his project: “This book is a sort of primer in ways to use statistics to deceive. It may seem altogether too much like a manual for swindlers. [But] the crooks already know these tricks; honest men must learn them in self-defense.”
Unlike Huff, I wouldn’t (and can’t) cover all the angles people employ to deceive with statistics. Like him, however, it is a concern seeing how people abuse statistics and deploy them as a weapon to tell lies. So I propose to share three tips of how to spot a bad statistic.
1.    What is the baseline?
Seeing that it hasn’t fulfilled any shining promise, our government distributes and publishes statistics and makes nothing of the baselines.  But you can use that to catch them.  For example, if I presented a report that says HIV kills six million people per year in Lagos, you can ask one question to quickly discover I couldn’t have told the truth: what is the total number of people who die yearly from all causes (from accidents, cancer, of natural causes, etc.) in Lagos?  If the answer is less than six million people per year, you’d know that statistic was a lie.
It’s the baseline technique that Obasanjo’s minister of agriculture, Adamu Bello, used to expose the lies of Jonathan’s minister of agriculture, Dr. AkinwumiAdesina.
Before then, the man and his ministry overwhelmed us with statistics.  “We ended 40 years of fertiliser corruption in 90 days,” they informed us.  Also, the growth that the Jonathan administration has engendered in the agriculture sector was unprecedented.It happened that this was a complete fabrication.  
Sharing data from the National Bureau of Statistics and the Central Bank of Nigeria, Adamu Bello said that instead of growing, there had been a decline in the sector since Obasanjo left office.
Statistics showed that between 2003 and 2007 when Obasanjo left office, the growth in agriculture sector averaged 6.85 percent. The growth started declining immediately after he left office. And in 2013, under Jonathan, growth in the sector was 4.5 percent; the government failed its own target of 8.0 percent growth.  
Also, the ministry was simply being mischievous when it said that it eliminated N26 billion annual corruption in fertiliser distribution. Using the same baseline technique, we can ask what the total budget for fertiliser per year was in those years. That was what Adamu Bello did.  The answer may surprise you: N3 billion!
How can you steal 26 from 3?  Bello said the total subsidy between 1999 and 2007 was under N25billion. “This can be verified from the Budget Office of the Federal Ministry of Finance,” he said.
Another baseline question, if N870 billion fertiliser subsidy was embezzled in 40 years, what was the total budget for agriculture for those years?  
Adamu Bello doubted if the entire budget for the ministry of agriculture was up to that amount. “To claim that there was subsidy of N870 billion spent on fertilisers since the use of fertilisers was initially encouraged by the government about 40 years ago is most unfair, as I doubt if the entire agricultural budgets for the whole period was up to that sum,” he said.
Dr. Adesina knew he could no longer win with statistics, so he changed tactics. He challenged Adamu Bello to tell the citizens his achievements in seven years as minister of agriculture.
“Bello never told Nigerians the truth about his actual performance in office. Let him give details commodity-by-commodity, and let him state where and how this impact was felt,” Adesina said through his assistant on media, Oyeleye Olukayode.
Under a better president Adesina could be a good agriculture minister.  However, what we get from the ministry now is too much noise and a good deal of initiatives and acronyms: phone for farmers, e-wallet, Growth Enhancement Scheme (GES), Youth Employment in Agriculture Programme (YEAP), Fund for Agricultural Finance in Nigeria (FAFIN), NIRSAL, and so forth.  We’re confused.