. . . Charges FG to first fix insecurity, other problems

The Human & Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre) has joined the Chairman, Senate Committee on Aviation, Senator Smart Adeyemi, to raise eyebrows over the N400bn budget proposal by the National Population Commission (NPC) for conducting the 2022 National Census. HEDA also questioned the rationale for conducting the census “at this precarious time in the history of Nigeria.”

Chairman of HEDA, Suraj Olanrewaju, said Tuesday in an interview that “though collection and collation of data is very essential for planning, decision making and policy making, howbeit; there are other exigencies begging for attention in the country today, therefore- conducting census at this critical time was not the best thing to do if Nigeria must come out from the woods.”

According to him, “It would be precarious to ignore the warning which the chief of Army gave about security situation in the country when he (COAS) envisaged that the military would have more security challenges in 2022 going forward.

“We must be alive and safe before we come out to be counted. If NPC go on to conduct this census, many people would be omitted because not all nooks and crannies would be reached by NPC officers. We should first make the country safe for living before we talk about census.”

Olanrewaju stressed that the most important and urgent needs must be met first before other necessities are attended to. He noted that “one does not chase a rat at the same time when one’s house is on fire, but the house owner would put away the fire first and secure the house before chasing the rat, that is to say, the major, urgent and most important things must be attended to before the minor ones.”

He further said: “If we have such amount of money for census alone, why not deploy it into other projects with a sure hope of greater returns both in the short and long run? We have unemployment challenge, Infrastructure deficit, among others which is telling on Nigerians adversely, we need to tell ourselves the truth and do the right things at the right time and place with the right resources, with right motive and achieve the right results.”

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