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Committee for the Defence of Human Rights
Some civil society organisations have condemned the delay in the conduct of the national census.
According to the CSOs, the failure of the Federal Government to conduct the census is a major factor affecting proper planning for the country’s development.
The National Population Commission had during the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari proposed a budget of approximately N800bn for the 2023 population and housing census.
By May 2023, a total sum of N224bn was disbursed to the commission, in addition to N10bn approved in October 2020 for enumeration area demarcation across 546 local government areas.
Originally scheduled for May 2023, the census was postponed to allow the then-incoming President Tinubu’s administration to have input.
However, 17 months into his presidency, Tinubu has not announced a new date for the exercise, raising concerns about its implications for governance, economic planning and resource allocation.
Speaking on the matter, the President of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, Debo Adeniran, said it was unfortunate that census hadn’t been conducted for years.
He said Nigeria’s security crisis was worsened by the lack of adequate record of the population of citizens.
Adeniran noted, “The reason the distribution of good governance has not been equitable is because we don’t know the number of people we’re catering for. There is no way there will be equal distribution of work and wealth in a country that doesn’t have a clear understanding of its population.
“This has been the problem of successive governments since the last population census was carried out. This isn’t rocketing science for the government to count the number of people within its territory. It’s the complacency of government officials who are nonchalant about it.”
Sharing his thoughts, a public affairs analyst, Dr Emma Jimo, said failure to conduct a census was a huge problem for Nigeria.
He noted that conducting the census would enable the planners of the country to know how to allocate resources for people within the geographical entity.
