ABUJA – The Chairman of National Population Commission (NPC), Mr Ese Duruiheoma, said over politicisation of census was one of the major challenges undermining accurate national census data in Nigeria.
Duruiheoma said this while making a presentation to the National Conference Committee on Immigration on Monday in Abuja.
He said the question that bothered every well-meaning Nigerian was how NPC could generate accurate census figure that would be devoid of acrimony and other influence.
“The problem that bedevils our census efforts is over politicisation of issues of census because people see census in terms of criteria for revenue allocation,’’ he said.
The chairman said the purpose of census was to enable a country to plan “as a people and as a nation’’.
“With accurate census, you will be able to know how many Nigerians are in a particular place at a particular time and the figure to be expected over a period of time.
“These are the things that census should help us to do and not how much money a state government gets from the national wealth which bothers most of us.
“The real benefit of census is to enable us plan effectively and we should de-emphasise politics from it,’’ the chairman said.
He, however, urged the committee to come up with recommendations that would make it a crime to falsify national data-base, especially the census data.
Duruiheoma said the next census was expected to hold in 2016.
According to him, the adoption of technology such as biometric data in capturing of Nigerians is part of the key preparation of the commission.
“The use of satellite to get imageries from the ground is another technology we are going to employ,’’ he said.
He explained that once the date of the census was confirmed by the President, NPC would embarked on nationwide consultation with Nigerians on relevant data to be captured in the exercise.
“If Nigerians are of the opinion that religion, ethnicity and other data need to form part of the data that should be considered, we will consider them,’’ he said.
Duruiheoma said the commission was already embarking on preparation for the census while it had requested for about N17 billion through the 2014 budget to enable it embark on the preparation.
The chairman said the commission was still trying to achieve about 45 per cent of birth registration in the country due to some constraints.
These, according to him, include funding challenge and non-compliance to the commission directive by some state governments. (NAN)
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