CENSUS FIGURES IN NIGERIA: IS A FRAUD,MANIPULATIONS AND DECEIT

“Arrest him! Arrest him now!”That was the statement of former Assistant Inspector-General of Police, AIG, Ibrahim Ahmed , a delegate representing the Northern part of Nigeria at the ongoing National Conference in Abuja ordering the arrest of a delegate from Edo State, Chris Agbonwanegbe, for challenging the census figure of Northern Nigeria.

Mr. Chris Agbonwanegbe, buttressed his point when he said, “I did my National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, programme in the North. So, I know what I saw during my service years. I can authoritatively tell you that there is injustice in this country.

“How can a state like Katsina or Kano have more local government areas than Lagos which has the highest population? It is obvious that there is injustice and this should be addressed.

“From previous censuses we have had, it is obvious that Nigeria cannot conduct a credible census. We need to invite the United Nations to help us in conducting a census that will be accepted by everyone and finally put the argument about the region with the highest number to a rest.”

His submission did not go down well with many Northern delegates who threw caution to the wind for him to challenge the age long Abracadabra of census figures, in a bid to stop him from speaking further on the matter, the Northern delegates screamed and raised a point of order to stop the Edo delegate from continuing to speak, Conference Chairman, Idris Kutigi, ignored them.

However, former governor of Ogun State, Segun Osoba, re-echoed the position of Mr. Agbonwanegbe and called for the reversal of the injustice he said characterized the number of local government councils in some parts of the country. “The era of trying to manipulate census figure is over. With the help of Google, we can now get the number of people in a particular area. We can use that to conduct our census. I do not subscribe to the fact that the United Nations should conduct our census for us.”Osoba said.