Afenifere, the Yoruba socio-political group, has called on
the federal government to stop the planned May 3 population census.
In a communique released on Thursday by Sola Ebiseni, the
group’s secretary general, Afenifere described the timing of the exercise as
“inauspicious” and “impossible in credible implementation”.
Ebiseni said the “citizens are still incensed and distraught
by the trauma of violence and brigandage of the elections”.
“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. Afenifere decries the most insensitive
deployment of over N100 billion on this wasteful exercise as scandalous and an
economic offence,” the statement reads.
“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.
“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
PortHarcourt 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, and a lesser headcount exercise, the
integrity deficiency of this administration is abysmally compounded in
conducting census in which partisan disputes in Nigeria are often at the level
of communities, states, and ethnic nationalities having been politicised over
time”.
In March, the federal government announced the 2023
population census would commence on May 3 and end two days later.
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