As controversy continues to trail the appointment of Mr. Silas Agara, a Christian as Chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC), the Centre for Social and Inter-ethnic Cohesion (CENSIC) has faulted the federal government over exclusion of other regions from the appointments.
National Council of State (NCS) had recently ratified the appointments of the Chairman as well as other officials of the Commission.
Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha had confirmed the ratification of the officials of the Commission.
The nominees include Muhammed Dottijo (Sokoto); Razaq Gidado (Kwara); Ibrahim Mohammed (Bauchi); Joseph Shazin (FCT); Bala Banya (Katsina) and Bimbola Salu-Hundeyin (Lagos).
Others are from Zamfara; Yobe; Jigawa and Ekiti while two representatives were from Nassarawa state.
Reacting to the Federal Government’s lopsided appointments, the Director of Public Relations, CENSIC, Mr. Wellington Olaiya said, it is surprising to note that, the South-south and South-east regions were excluded from the appointments, thus urging the government to correct its mistake in the coming days or weeks.
‘’It has come to our attention that the composition of the members and chairman of the Commission is in clear breach of the law’’, he stated.
According to Olaiya, the appointments excluded the two geopolitical zones, which is a clear violation of the Federal Character Act.
‘’We want to believe this is an error on the part of the executive arm of the government and we look forward to its correction’’.
It would be recalled that the House of Representatives had recently asked the federal government to conduct a national census before the end of 2020.
It stated that the result from the last one conducted in 2006 is no longer effective for policymaking.
Ademorin Kuye (APC, Lagos), whose motion led to this resolution called this unfortunate, saying until census is made a mandatory national ritual at intervals like elections, Nigeria would continue to have delays in organizing national census.
Government he said requires data to know the number of children being born; number of schools and hospitals that would be needed; how many workers are in a given town and how many foreigners are in the country, for proper provision of infrastructural facilities.
Nigeria has a dynamic economy and a large population which is expected to double in the next two decades and census is a pivotal and necessary tool for the growth of any emerging society, which in turn informs decision-making at all facets of public and private sectors.
Headcount as a globally practice, should be conducted at least once every 10 years.
In the past years, population census has been botched either for security, political or financial reasons.
For instance, in 2018, the National Assembly called for the postponement of the proposed population census because it feared that it might end in chaos since it was coming on the eve of the 2019 general elections.
The last census was however alleged to have been ‘politicized’ and marred by ‘over counting’.
Since the 2006 census, Nigeria has been using projected estimates for its population, thereby making government policies weak and easily manipulated.

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