Speaker of the
House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has warned against politicising the
2018 population census.
He called on
those clamouring for conduct of the census in 2018 to exercise patience till
after the 2019 elections, when, he said, there would be no political pressure
to manipulate its outcome.
The Speaker
advised that the next administration should conduct the census at the beginning
of its tenure “when there isn’t so much at stake.”
He said
conducting population census in an election year may increase the push for
“unrealistic results.”
Dogara, in a
statement issued by his Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs, Turaki
Hassan, maintained that he was giving the advice without putting personal or
political consideration ahead of national interest.
“I won’t
advise anyone to conduct census in 2018. I said it before, that if we are not
going to achieve it in 2017, then we should just forget it until after 2019.
“If you
conduct census at the nick of elections, there will be so much pressure, crisis
and the lure for people to manipulate the figures for political reasons, such
that the agency cannot even cope with.
“So, it is
better for a fresh administration to conduct this exercise from the beginning
of that administration when we do not have any pressure of elections in sight.
But I can bet you, if the census is conducted in 2018, the outcome will be
doubtable.”
Dogara said
the nation did not need the kind of litigation, backlash and pressure that usually characterised census
exercise in an election year.
“We have so
many challenges, let’s empower the agencies to keep building on the blocks that
they will leverage on in the future in order to do the exercise, but doing it
in 2018, honestly, it is nothing I would advocate.”
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