As Nigeria’s attempt to determine its actual population entered a third day on Thursday, abduction of census officials, abandonment by enumerators, shortages of materials and violence have continued to dog the exercise.
Regarded as the most populous country in Africa, Nigeria has never succeeded in determining its actual population, relying on estimated figures over the years.
Four earlier censuses were marred by controversies. The last census, conducted in 1991, was the least controversial.
By Thursday, the third day of the five-day exercise, the majority of residents of Abuja, the nation’s capital, had yet to be counted as enumerators complained of a shortage of materials and non-payment of their allowances.
Other grievances of the census-takers included poor logistics and the substitution of their names with those of children, wards of politicians and cronies of officials of the National Population Commission (NPC) conducting the census.
The 850 000 enumerators engaged in the exercise were supposed to have been paid a $37 training allowance each, but many have yet to be paid.
NPC chairman, Samuila Makama, said in Abuja on that all the problems encountered would be overcome.
”The problem is that some of the enumerators actually collected their training allowances and absconded, because we have not paid them for the actual census. They are not supposed to be paid until after the census,” he said.
Richard Adigun, a political commentator, said ”the exercise was not designed to succeed in the first place. It is just a diversionary tactic to sway attention away from Obasanjo’s third-term agenda.”
”Nigerians will be focusing attention on the census, while Obasanjo perfects his plan to perpetuate himself in office,” Adigun added.
Controversies followed the exercise across the country as police in Aba, in Abia State in the south-east, arrested two people over the alleged abduction of census officials.
Those arrested were suspected to be members of the separatist Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (Massob) who had earlier vowed to disrupt the census.
East Nigeria declared a Republic of Biafra in 1967 in an attempt to secede from the rest of Nigeria. The action led to a 30-month civil war, which ended in January 1970, after the rebellion was crushed and Nigeria remained intact.
Police spokesperson in Abia State, Uche Chukwuji, said the two suspects participated in the abduction of four census supervisors, but the census officials were rescued.
An irate mob also burnt the census office in another part of Abia on Thursday.
In Enugu, also in the south-east, gun-toting men believed to be members of Massob beat up a census coordinator and burnt her car.
Census Federal Commissioner in Enugu State, Dr Suleiman Bello, described the incident as very unfortunate.
In Lagos, Nigeria’s business capital, census officials said the number of homeless and destitute found squatting under bridges and by roadsides overwhelmed them.
”We did not envisage the number of homeless we encountered on Lagos Island,” Foluke Adebayo, the census official coordinator for the area, said on Thursday.
She said enumerators were on Lagos Island until early morning to try to count the homeless, but could not conclude the exercise because of the large number of people ”and worse still, there was a heavy downpour that virtually made nonsense of the exercise”.
In the Fagge area of Kano, the largest city in Nigeria’s north, 400 enumerators held a council chairperson hostage on Thursday to protest against the non-payment of their training allowances.
The census-takers also held hostage a traditional monarch and a top functionary of the Kano State government, posted to the area to monitor the exercise.
Spokesperson of the aggrieved enumerators, Ahmed Mohammed, said the chairman and his officials ”adamantly refused to pay our allowances for the past two days”.
”If they refuse to settle our allowances, we have no option other than to abandon the census exercise,” he said.
Upon police intervention and assurances that the allowances would be paid, the enumerators released the hostages. — Sapa-dpa