A thick and ominous cloud is hovering over the rescheduled 2023 Population and Housing Census exercise, findings have revealed.
Recall that the National Population Commission (NPC), had earlier fixed March 29, 2023, as kick-off date for the exercise.
However, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, announced the shift of the census exercise to May 3 at the end of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting held on Wednesday, March 15, 2023. According to the minister, the shift in date was necessitated by the unexpected postponement of the Governorship and Houses of Assembly elections from its earlier date of March 11 to March 18.
However, sources in government and NPC have revealed that owing largely to the myriads of obstacles on its paths, the census exercise may not start on May 3 as planned.
Some of the challenges presently bogging the exercise, the sources disclosed, include lack of funding; the decision of foreign technical partners to withdraw the much needed funding and expertise; opposition to the timing of the exercise by powerful forces from the southern part of the country and many others.
Expectedly, the major obstacle on the part of the exercise, it was gathered, is that of lack of funding.
Reliably sources in the Government disclosed that barring funding issues, the President Muhammadu Buhari administration would have conducted the exercise a long time ago.
According to several official figures, the Nigerian Population Commission will require about N900 billion to conduct a successful census.
Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clement Agba, while speaking during a high level partners engagement on the 2023 population and housing census in Abuja on March 7, 2023, said, The total requirement for the census (including post census activities) is N869 billion.
Checks showed that while the census proper will gulp N626 billion, post-census activities, which will last till 2025, will require additional N243billion.
However, out of the funds budgeted for the census exercise, only N294.3 billion had been released so far by the Federal Government as at March 15 by the government.
It was gathered that while the sum of N291.5 billion were released to the NPC in tranches between June 2022 and January 2023, another N2.8billion for the procurement of the software to be used for the conduct of the census was released after the FEC meeting of March 17, totalling N294.3 billion (about 47% of total funding).
Further breakdown of the figures indicate that out of the N626 billion (post census figures not included) needed for the conduct of the census proper, only N294.3 billion had been released, while the outstanding N325billion is yet to be released.
The releases are, however, a far cry from what is needed to conduct a successful census.
Also, recall that the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan had proposed a census exercise in 2016, exactly ten years after the much controversial census of 2006, which was the last enumeration conducted in the country.
Jonathans embattled government was however unable to accomplish the task before leaving office in 2015 owing to several political and economic factors.
