President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the appointment of Simon Harry as the new Statistician-General of the Federation to head National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

This is according to a statement from Yunusa Abdullahi, Special Adviser, Media and Communications to Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning on Thursday.

Harry is to succeed the out-going Statistician-General, Yemi Kale, whose second term tenure of five years expired on August 16.

Currently, Harry is the Director of Corporate Planning and Technical Coordination Department of NBS with almost three decades of statistical experience.

He joined the Federal Office of Statistics as Statistician 11 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 was transformed to the current National Bureau of Statistics.

He also contributed to the reform of the Nigerian Statistical System which resulted in the creation and establishment of state bureaus of statistics at the sub-national level.

NAN