The pan Yoruba sociopolitical group, Afenifere has called for the cancellation of the 2023 census, insisting that exercise is ill-timed.
Afenifere made the call in a communique issued on Tuesday at the end its monthly general meeting, held at the Isanya Ogbo, Ogun state residence of the Acting National leader of the group, Chief Ayo Adebanjo.
The group in the communique signed by its Secretary General, Chief Sola Ebiseni bemoaned what it termed “the unthinkable insistence of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration in conducting the 2023 National Census in spite of the objective realities which make such an important national exercise most inauspicious in timing and impossible in credible implementation.”
Afenifere described the deployment of over N100 billion for the conduct of the census as “insensitive and wasteful”.
“There is no compelling reason why the census must be held by the expiring Buhari administration”, the group declared while calling on the President henceforth stop all preparations towards the conduct of the exercise.
The group said, “Afenifere bemoans the unthinkable insistence of the Buhari administration in conducting the 2023 National Census in spite of the objective realities which make such an important national exercise most inauspicious in timing and impossible in credible implementation.
“Afenifere recalls that in a paper it presented at the National Consultative Forum on the 2023 Census held at the Banquet Hall, State House Abuja on the 11th August 2022, it reiterated the imperative of census in national development noting that the application and misuse of Census data had been our bane as a country where we lie to ourselves and the world about our number indulging in laughable projections sometimes based on assumed and fixed percentage of population growth across different parts notwithstanding glaring variables.
“It is in the light of the importance of credible exercise that, in the August 2022 Conference, we strongly advised against the conduct of the Census which, among other reasons, we said could not possibly hold in the same year of a General election.
“Other well meaning personalities and institutions including the UNFPA Resident Representative in Nigeria who at another Conference in Port Harcourt on the 26th-29th March 2023 and most recently the Methodist Church Nigeria, Diocese of Calabar which all have raised concerns on the possibility of reasonable and genuine participation in an acceptable headcount in the current mood of the nation.
“That Afenifere is particularly bemused that Government expects participation in headcount by citizens still incensed and distraught by the trauma of violence and brigandage of the elections or by those in IDP camps within their country in whose ancestral homes terrorists in occupation will now be counted as new indigenes.
“That all factors considered, including its inability to supervise a transparent electoral process, a lesser headcount exercise, the integrity deficiency of this administration is abysmally compounded in conducting census which partisan disputes in Nigeria is often at the level of communities, states and ethnic nationalities having been politicised overtime.
“Afenifere decries the most insensitive deployment of over 100 billion Naira on this wasteful exercise as scandalous and an economic offence.
“Afenifere conclusively says there is no compelling reason why the census must be held by the expiring Buhari administration and calls for all steps and preparations in that regards to be stopped forthwith.”
