…As poor funding, election threaten exercise
The Chairman Senate Committee on Population and National Identity, Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi, has expressed fears over the conduct of the 2018 population census.
Hunkuyi said that it would be almost impossible to hold the census in 2018 because necessary activities such as presidential proclamation had not been done six months to the end of 2017.
He also noted that the conduct of the 2019 general elections posed serious threat to the census.
The senator, who represents Kaduna North, said preconditions for every census in Nigeria and indeed within the developing countries were usually sub-divided into three segments, including the pre-year of the census, the year proper for the census and the post-year.
He added that if the census would hold next year, 2017 is the pre-year of activity, when so many activities such as training and demarcation area activities must be carried out before the year of the census proper.
Hunkuyi regretted that only very little had been achieved regarding the preparations for next year’s exercise.
Talking about the funding and budgeting aspect, the Senate committee chairman said, “The total funding requested by the National Population Commission for the pre-event, the actual event and the post-year comes up to about N220 billion, out of which the breakdown for pre-year activity cannot be less than between N50billion and N70billion.
But what the executive has provided in the year 2017 budget, which has already been passed by the National Assembly, is a paltry sum of N5billion for the year 2017.
“If you remove part of the recurrent provision, which is more of personnel, what you have is certainly less and less in value to undertake any meaningful outing for the precensus year activity for funding.
These are the parameters, areas and issues that make it look completely unrealisable for the possibility of census in 2018.
“Most of census activities are recurrent. So, whether you call it recurrent or capital, the only thing is that personnel cost and other related matters is an annual event that goes in year in year out to pay salaries, allowances and other day-to-day working materials for the administrative running of MDAs, which is not inclusive because that is just a bill; whether you are going into census or not, they are static cost to be provided in the budget, he said.
Speaking further, Hunkuyi said if the required funding was not provided and the necessary activities were not carried out in the next three months, conducting the 2018 census would not be practically realiseable.
“There seems to be no way out, because you may be able to provide the money but you cannot hold, fasten or reverse time.
Much as you may enhance funding and the proclamation, you cannot hold time or make it elastic. These are the challenges. If by the end of the next two, three months, those funding, proclamations, other requests by the international participatory agencies are not effected, there is no practicability and no magic can be done for census to hold in Nigeria in 2018,” he said.
The lawmaker also noted that the country might not be able to cope with the closeness of the 2019 general elections to the period for the conduct of the 2018 census.
“Another challenge is that 2019 is the election year and the possibility of combining census with the national election that year is also very remote, although in some advanced countries, that may not be an impossibility.” Hunkuyi said.
