By Cross Udo, Abuja
As the country prepares to conduct a national census, Nextier SPD has advised the Federal Government to review the legal framework around the conduct of the exercise and explore how to handle legal issues not elaborately covered in the Constitution.
Nextier also said adopting modern technology in the census process is necessary to guarantee efficiency, suitability, and data privacy.
This was contained in a statement issued by Dr Ben Nwosu, an Associate Consultant at Nextier SPD, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus, and a Senior Lecturer at Political Science Department, Nsukka Campus, and Dr Ndu Nwokolo, Managing Partner and Chief Executive at Nextier and an Honorary Fellow at the School of Government and Society at the University of Birmingham, UK.
They told the National Population Commission (NPC) to address how its system would check the inflation of figures during or after enumeration and also aim at eliciting information regarding how they coordinate with other government agencies for tracking, mobilization, and sensitisation.
The Nextier SPD experts said, “Census figures are not just numbers. They are numbers with political significance and are deployed in the contest for spaces in a state that prioritizes distributing resources that mostly benefit the ruling group.
“Given the political significance of demographic figures, the process of its generation is also politicized. Hence, census processes are distrusted while its figures are contested.
“As Nigeria prepares for head and household count in 2023, stakeholder engagement around the legal framework, technological deployment, issues of displaced population and refugeehood from conflicts and terrorism, issues of political interference and the extent of inter-agency collaboration and how they bear on the census, all need to be subjected to open public conversation to achieve a credible and acceptable census.”
According to him, “Barring the last-minute suspension of Nigeria’s housing and population census, scheduled to start on 3rd May and end on 7th May 2023, the country would have had a published figure of its demographics.
“Despite an expenditure of 200 billion Naira out of the budgeted 800 billion Naira for the exercise, that suspension relieved anxieties about the census. Many doubted the possibility of generating reliable and acceptable census data from the preparation for that exercise. Centrally, it is argued that the laws governing census are limited and deserve a review.
“Similarly, the systems of the National Population Commission (NPC) responsible for the Nigerian census have not been subjected to pre-census independent multi-stakeholder audits and integrity tests.
“The audits and integrity tests of the systems and other elements related to the census are crucial because the census and its figures in Nigeria have historically been a source of acrimony.
“Census is a source of tension because it is the basis of political and economic decision-making, especially value allocation. Decisions about constituency demarcation for political representation, revenue allocation, planning for taxation, creation of states, creation of local government areas, and other aspects of the distribution of public goods are determined by census figures.
“The nature of the Nigerian state as one that depends mostly on the proceeds of one major product distributed by the central government amidst parasitic political elites makes it even more complex.
“The efforts of major political actors to get a disproportionate share of social goods for themselves make them contest or negotiate inflated numbers for their ethnic groups or political constituency so that more resources are made available to these areas, not necessarily for the public good but for the diversion of elites who are chiefly obligated to themselves and their cronies.
“Consequently, head and household counts are usually characterized by conflicting claims and tensions. The 1962/63 censuses were believed to be part of the remote factors that led to the crises which ended Nigeria’s first civil rule in 1966.”
Continuing, they said, “As we approach another census of persons and households, the value of figures remains highly political, and the process for generating those figures still begs for greater openness. In our highly divided, low-trust society, it is engagement with the census process to improve it and enhance the acceptability of its outcome that could mitigate the acrimonious disagreements that trail census results.”
Hence, in this edition of the Nextier SPD Policy Weekly, we explore the census processes and points of critical engagements to reduce post-census tensions.”
They contended that the country’s population figures have a certain north-south divide.
“Northern cultural context and vast territory offer a basis to expect a dense population. At the same time, southern proximity to the coast is a basis for expecting that movement towards the direction of opportunities should necessarily lead to greater numbers in the region. Incidentally, after more than a century of conducting censuses, Nigeria has yet to resolve these contrasting claims.
“Nigeria has prepared to undertake another census in 2023 when issues of politics, religion, ethnicity, and demographics are major sources of fission. There is fierce competition for livelihood resources which leads groups to invade others.
“In some instances, some invite their ethnic kin beyond Nigerian boundaries to join in ethnic fights, settle where people have been displaced, and alter the demographics in favour of their ethnic kin groups. This pattern is part of the fallouts of the conflicts in North Central Nigeria and Kaduna State.”
