The government of Nigeria has again postponed the 2023 census to a date to be set by the incoming administration.
Development Diaries reports that President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday approved the postponement of the census scheduled to take place from 03–07 May, 2023.
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said in a statement that the president gave the approval after meeting with some members of the Federal Executive Council and the Chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC), Nasir Isa-Kwarra, and his team.
Recall that the census, which was earlier scheduled for 29 March, was shifted to May.
The country’s population is estimated at more than 200 million and the United Nations expects that figure to double by 2050.
The NPC, in a statement, said the major reason for the latest postponement was to allow the incoming administration to be abreast of the processes used in the collection of the census data.
There had been various calls for the postponement of the census for different reasons.
The reasons cited were inadequate preparation, lack of funds, lack of training of supervisors for the exercise, credibility doubts raised by its timing, as well as insecurity.
For instance, the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Clem Agba, had earlier said that out of the N869 billion ($1.88 billion) required for the census, the government had only committed about a quarter of the sum.
That was an indication that the government was not ready on the funding front, and hoped on foreign support.
Another concern was the faulty timing of the census. Many economic experts had questioned why the government was in a hurry to conduct the exercise at a time it ought to be preparing to hand over to the next administration.
Development Diaries believes that human population census requires meticulous planning and the government has not demonstrated its readiness to carry out this important exercise.
The action of the Buhari administration can be described as a misplaced priority.
We call on the incoming government to set its priorities right from the outset and meticulously plan to conduct a comprehensive physical counting of Nigerians all over the country
Photo source: Joshua Doubek
