Issue Presidential Proclamation on 2022 Census, PAN tells Buhari

The Population Association of Nigeria (PAN), has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to issue a presidential proclamation for the conduct of 2022 national housing census in Nigeria.

President of PAN, Professor Rhoda Mundi, made this call while addressing newsmen today in Abuja, said every Nigerian had to be counted, there is a plan by the National Population Commission to conduct a digital census in Nigeria in 2022,

Mundi, who is also a lecturer at the department of geography and environmental management in University of Abuja, said President Muhammadu Buhari need to make a presidential proclamation on the census to send the right signal to Nigerians and international communities.

She said: “I’m surprised that the President has not made any proclamation on the Census. And that will be sending wrong signal, as if he don’t believe that the census would be credible. People will begin to call why is the President hesitating? I think the earlier he make this proclamation, the better for all of us, and even the international communities so that they know what is happening”

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“Look at elections every four years, you know that an election will take place. Now since the last election took place in 2019. Immediately after the election people have been planning for 2023 that there’s going to be another election. Why can it be the same with census? The census we are supposed to be having periodically, we know that it is once in every 10 years, constitutionally”

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“We at population association of Nigeria. We work with data. It’s an organization that is made up of demographers, academicians, statisticians, even lawyers, health workers all these people interested in population matters. Once we know that it will be coming up at stipulated time, we won’t have to wait until they make the budget”

“The last census would have be conducted in 2016, but they say 2018. This is 2022 we are still waiting for the proclamation”

She noted that data collection is not only for a country but an international development.“Your data when you collect data, you’re collecting your data on the demographic characteristics of your population, how many males? How many females? You collect on the age composition? How many? And what age groups you are collecting on the social characteristics?

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“How many are married, how many are single, how many and so on so forth. You are collecting on the economic aspects of the population? How many are engaged in agriculture? How many are professionals? so, when you have this data is not just us. But everybody, there is no sector that doesn’t use the population data”.