President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has created 12 million jobs since assuming power in 2015, the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, said when he appeared on ChannelsTv’s Sunrise Daily programme on Monday.

Garba Shehu said this when asked about National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data which indicated that millions of jobs have been lost.

He said the Director General of NBS, Dr. Yemi Kale, had admitted to the Federal Government that they had only focused on white collar jobs loses.

“The NBS chief while addressing the Federal cabinet and made admission himself that they had concentrated their analysis over time on white collar jobs and that they haven’t taken into cognisance of jobs creation in the area of agriculture, ” he said.

“The Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria made an open claim that they have created 12 million new jobs and nobody has come out to dispute that”.

“When he finished addressing the Federal cabinet last week, the DG was told to go out and address the public about what he just told them. So you’re just saying to us that Jigawa, Kebbi and Ebonyi are reporting the lowest employment rate on the account of agriculture”.

“So I think that it is data collected on the basic of which some of the judgements that have been passed are misleading. There is now a convergence. The data has been unfair to this administration, they have ignored job creation in the areas of agriculture and now that is being integrated and Nigerians will be impressed with us as we have created 12 million new jobs in the area of agriculture.

Dr. Yemi Kale has however denied Garba Shehu’s claim.

The statistician, who responded to a question tweeted at him on his official twitter handle about Shehu’s claim, denied misleading the public on the number job loses across the country.

“Neither the statistician General nor NBS ever made any such admission at any time to anybody and the unemployment computations does take into account all sectors, age groups and both rural and urban areas” he said.