THE 2016 CENSUS: WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO BE WORRIED NOW

The Nigerian census is carried out every 10 years, perhaps with a few exceptions like when former President Olusegun Obasanjo had it postponed by a year, because the then Federal Government felt it wasn’t ready to carry out the exercise. Regardless, ten years is a long time to get ready for a census and clearly with much doubt the Nigerian government never seems ready. Perhaps waiting 10 years is the problem and the fact that the Nigerian government doesn’t carry out ‘mock’ census makes it harder to work out the kinks in carrying out future exercises, especially in a country with an ever-increasing population and a continuous lack of proper record-keeping.

            

 If mock census were carried out within these 10 year spans, hence making the exercise frequent, fewer mistakes would be made by figuring out technical problems and establishing a better process of carrying out future census. Now by ‘mock’ census I don’t mean actually counting all the citizens in the country, but by counting say houses in Abuja or schools in Kaduna, something that will resemble the process of a census, we can establish a pattern of success and familiarity.

             

With these mock census- some from various government agencies -the NPC (Nigerian Population Commission) can already have established data to look upon when carrying out future census. It would also be better for them to have information from within the 10 year span than from when the last census was carried out.

             

As of now the Federal Government under President Goodluck Jonathan has already approved of N600bn to the NPC for the 2016 census for the period of five years at the rate of N120b per year. It would be sad if he didn’t come back to see it carried out… said no one yet! Jokes (and sentiments) aside, there is no mention as to whether the Federal Government has made special provisions for the census in the North-Eastern region of Nigeria, specifically the states of Adamawa and the heavily ridden Boko Haram terrorized states of Borno and Yobe (considering there is no end to the menace before then).

How does the Federal Government plan to carry out census there and can they assure the safety of their workers and what happens if they can’t, will a whole region then not be accounted for in the census and how does that affect the bigger picture if state allocations are based on the results of said census? Lest we forget, the main issue with the census in Nigeria is not who was (mis)counted or whether mistakes were made, no. It’s the allocation of resources based on population, so you can see how this would be a problem if the North-East is not accounted for in the forever political battle between the North and the South over who has the largest population.

             

Too many questions to ask and yet there is still time to consider these things, but as we know from past regimes, the Nigerian government can have a fire brigade approach to things rather than a calculated one.

             

God help us… or whatever you put your faith in!