Insecurity may affect census, LG chairman cries out

The Chairman of Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State, Prof Ibrahim Bulama, has expressed concern that the insecurity ravaging communities in the southern part of the state would hamper the planned population census by the federal government. Bulama, who spoke in Maiduguri during a stakeholders’ meeting with the National Chairman of National Population Commission […]

The Chairman of Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State, Prof Ibrahim Bulama, has expressed concern that the insecurity ravaging communities in the southern part of the state would hamper the planned population census by the federal government.

Bulama, who spoke in Maiduguri during a stakeholders’ meeting with the National Chairman of National Population Commission (NPC), Hon Nasir Isa Kwarra, and Federal Commissioners of the Commission, lamented that majority of houses especially in deserted communities in many parts of Gwoza LGA have been destroyed by the insurgents.

“I am not against the position of my state governor and the president on the issue of security during the exercise in Borno State but my fears is that majority of my people were displaced out of their ancestral land and their houses destroyed; so, how can you count them when they have become Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Maiduguri and many scattered in other areas,” Bulama said.

The chairman appealled to the commission to reconsider the peculiar condition of the area by shifting the LGA exercise for another period to enable them conduct a hitch-free census of the people of Gwoza.

Responding, the National Chairman of NPC, Hon Nasir Isa Kwarra, allayed his fears, assuring that no citizen residing in the country will be left out including IDPs.