By Henry Uche, Lagos
Following the N400 billion budget proposal by the National Population Commission (NPC) and the objection raised by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Aviation, Senator Smart Adeyemi, among other concerned Nigerians, the Human & Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre) has joined forces with senator Adeyemi to raise eyebrows not only on the jumbo budget but on the rationale for conducting the census at this precarious time in the history of Nigeria.
In a telephone interview, the Chairman of HEDA, Suraj Olarenwaju, affirmed that though collection and collation of data are very essential for planning, decision making and policymaking, howbeit; there are other exigencies begging for attention in the country today, therefore- conducting census at this critical time was not the best thing to do if Nigeria must come out from the woods.
According to him, it would be precarious to ignore the warning which the Chief of the Army gave about the security situation in the country when he (COAS) envisaged that the military would have more security challenges in 2022 going forward.
‘We must be alive and safe before we come out to be counted. If NPC goes on to conduct this census, many people would be omitted because not all nooks and crannies would be reached by NPC officers. We should first make the country safe for living before we talk about the census.’
Olarenwaju stressed that the most important and urgent needs must be met first before other necessities are attended to. He noted that one does not chase a rat at the same time when one’s house is on fire, but the house owner would put away the fire first and secure the house before chasing the rat, that is to say, the major, urgent and most important things must be attended to before the minor ones.
‘If we have such amount of money for census alone, why not deploy it into something some other projects with a sure hope of greater returns both in the short and long-run? We have unemployment challenges, Infrastructure deficits, among others which are telling on Nigerians adversely, we need to tell ourselves the truth and do the right things at the right time and place with the right resources, with the right motive and achieve the right results,’ he stated.