Wither the ‘new’ National Population Commission?
This realization might have informed the decisions of past Nigerian governments to establish the National Census Bureau, which later metamorphosed to the National Population Commission (NPC) in 1988. Men and women of impeccable character that served the nation in various capacities were appointed to steer the affairs of the organization. Lest we forget, personalities in […]
This realization might have informed the decisions of past Nigerian governments to establish the National Census Bureau, which later metamorphosed to the National Population Commission (NPC) in 1988. Men and women of impeccable character that served the nation in various capacities were appointed to steer the affairs of the organization. Lest we forget, personalities in the likes of late Alhaji Abdurrahman Okene, late Alhaji Shehu Ahmadu Musa, Lt. Colonel Chris Ugokwe (rtd) and Chief Samu’ila Danko Makama, had all been chairman of the NPC at one time or the other. For those interested in the history of modern Nigeria, these names and indeed the members of the teams they served, speak volumes about the distinguished roles they played in the civil service, military and political spheres. For instance, Alhaji Shehu Musa and Chief Samu’ila Danko Makama were permanent secretaries in the federal civil service. The former served the defunct Second Republic as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
However, a cursory look at the profiles of these glorious men reveals some common attributes. They all served the nation at highly managerial levels in the public sector and earned recognition, respect and honour. The trustworthy, experienced, and non-sectional qualities they exhibited are revered by the Nigerian society. The persistence in identifying these qualities as prerequisites for assuming the leadership of the organization points to the fact that its functions are very critical to the social and economic development of the nation. All of them were able to steer the affairs of the Commission in unison and, together, with the support of staff, had formed a formidable team. The governments that appointed them were vindicated for the fact that the 1991 and 2006 national censuses were widely acceptable.
As a retired senior staff of the Commission and a professional, I know that no census is ever totally error-free anywhere in the world. The 1991 and 2006 Nigeria national censuses are no exception. However, the results of these censuses represent a fair distribution of the national population across the federating units. As the nation is breathing fresh air (?) so also is the National Population Commission. A clear departure from the past was discernible in the Chairman and the composition of the current members of the Commission that seem to agree with his views. For the first time the Commission had a Chairman who had never served the nation in any public capacity before his present appointment. The composition of the members of the Commission per se is not anything to worry about especially considering the calibre of staff of the Commission whose capacities have been built over the years. What is worrisome is the attitude of the new Chairman and by extension the Commission, given its national assignment which is supposed to be non-partisan. While no patriotic Nigerian will be desirous of a disastrous destiny for his country, recent happenings within the National Population Commission indicate that the outcome of any project it may undertake may be disastrous.
One may not be wrong to say that no administration is a total failure. In consideration of this, it is expected that an incoming administration would consolidate on the gains of its predecessors. However, the new NPC Board soon after its inauguration began by launching series of campaigns of calumny against its immediate predecessor and vitiating of the results of the 2006 Population and Housing Census. The new Board through its Chairman, Chief Festus Odimegwu, accused its predecessor of conducting a biased 2006 Census that favoured a section of the country (the North?). A critical analysis of past census results reveals a relatively constant pattern since 1903 with the North having a slight numerical edge over the South. An expert analysis is not required to explain this trend as it is a common knowledge to both Nigerians and non-Nigerians that fertility and family sizes shrink southwards in addition to the positive net migration balances that characterize the Northern zones. National surveys such as the Demographic and Health Surveys of 1999, 2003 and 2008 confirmed this trend.
The defunct NPC Board indeed had done the nation proud by conducting a scientific census that complied with the stringent United Nations Recommendations for the conduct of national censuses. The European Union not only funded 49 percent of the conduct of the exercise but also monitored the process and subsequently accepted the result without hesitation.
Undoubtedly, the new NPC Board has the legitimate authority to introduce innovations that will make the conduct of future censuses and other data collection exercises more effective. However, the criticisms of the management chart of the previous administration, and schedule of duties of the departments, and the incessant comments by Chief Odimegwu that the staffing, especially the top hierarchy, was lopsided can hardly make any significant effect on its performance. The Chairman may be pardoned for these comments as he had no idea that the civil service operates through an organized and consistent structure based on professional competence and seniority. If he had, he would never have insisted that personnel who should serve in the office of the Chairman must be Christian and Igbo.
It is no news that the immediate past Director General, who hailed from a northern minority ethnic group, was the first from the north of the River Niger to occupy this seat since the inception of the Commission. It is a known fact, too, that upon his retirement, the NPC Chairman objected to the appointment of the most senior Director to succeed the retired Director General even though he is a professional, simply because he also hails from the North. The intervention of the Office of the Secretary to Government of the Federation saved the day. The Chairman had removed a Director of a Department to serve in the Commission’s Secretariat, which is a unit in the office of the Chairman. Again, he removed another Director of a Department and posted him to a department that does not statutorily exist.
In the course of implementing a “strategic” architecture, the Chairman unilaterally created 3 departments and appointed 2 of the Directors from members of his ethnic group. What is more appalling is that the new appointees are not only professionally naïve to hold the offices but many other competent and more senior officers were bypassed. This has disrupted the long-established pattern of appointments based strictly on merit and seniority, things for which the organization was best known for, and which probably gave it the honour of having a staff structure adjudged to be among the most stable in the federal civil service.
The advocacy campaign of the Chairman that took him to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Country office portrayed the 2006 Census as a farce. This statement was diplomatically disputed by the UN agency’s Country Representative, when he asserted that to the best of their knowledge the Census was the most credible in the nation’s history. Chief Odimegwu might have forgotten that UNFPA and other development partners contributed immensely both financially and technically at all the stages of the census process. In fact, UNFPA appointed a resident Chief Technical Officer that monitored the entire process. To mention that these development partners have contributed and will continue to contribute in the making of the Nigerian Census is an understatement. This gesture may no longer be forthcoming however, given the current development. Do we have the zeal to go it alone? Perhaps to justify the huge budget proposal for the conduct of census in his time, the Chairman asserted, during a recent visit to the Commission by the Chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission, Professor Attahiru Jega, that the Enumeration Areas demarcated for the conduct of the 2006 census were bought by and sold to the highest bidder. The conclusion here is that Chief Odimegwu has only half-baked knowledge about what an enumeration area is, how it is formed, and how it relates to the actual census enumeration.
These antecedents give cause for concern as to where the current leadership of the NPC will be taking Africa’s demographic giant to. The Commission is expected to generate accurate and reliable data needed for developmental planning devoid of any primordial agenda. However, already there are doubts regarding the competence of the incumbent Commission to give the nation an acceptable population census come 2016. Nursing any ideas about which state or region would have numerical advantage over another should not be overtly manifest in a Chairman’s posture. The nation must therefore be saved from an impending debacle as a consequence of the posture assumed by the incumbent Chairman. If anything, his utterances have caused embarrassments to the Federal Government and those of us that participated in the 1991 and 2006 censuses. Evidence of ineptitude to steer the affairs of the Commission has been sufficiently demonstrated.
Haggai is a former staff of NPC <[email protected]>