President Bola Tinubu’s National Census Committee has been met with rejection by the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide, the youth wing of the main Igbo socio-cultural organization.
The formation of a high-level committee to oversee the upcoming national housing and population census was announced by President Tinubu’s Special Advisor to the President (Information & Strategy), Bayo Onanuga, in a statement released by the presidency.
It’s been nearly twenty years since Nigeria conducted its last census. There were 71,345,488 males and 69,086,302 females in the total population of 140,431,790. The Presidential Committee will be presided over by Senator Atiku Bagudu, the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning.
Other members include Muhammed Idris, the Minister of Information, Nasir Isa Kwarra, the Chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC) and committee secretary, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, the Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), the Director General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), the Principal Private Secretary to the President, and the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Administration and Operations (Office of the Chief of Staff).
In response, Mazi Okwu Nnabuike, national president of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council Worldwide, claimed that the Committee was biased towards the South-West region at the expense of other parts of the country. Okwu acknowledged that the census was a delicate subject and emphasized the need for transparency in all related processes to ensure fairness across the country.
In a statement shared with journalists on Monday, Okwu made it clear that they have been patiently waiting for the president to take action, but nearly two weeks after the one-sided committee was established, nothing has changed.
For once, the government of Nigeria should get the census results correct; Nigerians are well-aware of the problems that have followed previous counts.
Unfortunately, the present administration got off to a bad start by designating a committee that is overwhelmingly from the South and East, despite the fact that it is called the National Committee.
Like all nominations made by the present administration, this one utterly undermines the concept of federal character, and we make it plain that the committee in question has no national character whatsoever.
In a statement, Okwu urged the president to “either disband the committee it or expand it to accommodate other regions of the country,” adding that the current situation is thoroughly unacceptable.
We would not accept the distribution of figures to the Ndigbo people, he said, adding that the Census should not be treated like any other activity by the present government.