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The Virus At National Population Commission By Akinyemi Akinlabi
Sometimes around 1992 or 1993, I was a participant at a trade fair organized jointly by the governments of Oyo, Ogun, Ondo and Osun States. It was held at Abeokuta permanent trade fair complex. At the fair, The Nigeria National Population Commission (NPC) was in attendance to demonstrate the accuracy of the census it conducted in 1991 and to keep the people abreast of its activities and responsibilities to the nation. One of the responsibilities mentioned was the issuance of birth certificates/declaration of birth from the available data in the NPC census information.
In order to demonstrate the accuracy of the 1991 head count, the NPC came to the trade fair with a set of computer which they used to demonstrate how the final census figure was computed and collated. For example, if you tell them your state, local government and your enumeration unit, the computer will display the number of housing units in your area, your town, local government and the state. Similarly, the computer will pull out the names, age, sex and other demographic about everybody in your household. The NPC officer convinced us that if any of the information is wrong, it must have been an enumeration error caused by humans at the data collection stage. I was delighted when the computer pulled out my name and the names of everybody in my household after I had given them the name of my town, Igboora in Oyo State. The information was correct and accurate.
At that time, I knew close to nothing about computer but the NPC officer taught me and my friend about the computer’s ability to keep and retain the information for eternity and the fact that NPC will always make the census figure available for other government agencies for National Planning, Issuance of Passport, Banking, Electoral Matters, Health and Education. She concluded that subsequent census will just be to update and validate facts because the NPC will be adding newborn children to the figure and reduce the figure with the death records. According to the officer, Immigrants and emigrants will be taken care at the various ports and updated in the census figure appropriately. As a matter of fact, it demonstrated that the NPC led by Alhaji Sheu Musa was well equipped and well funded to provide the much needed tool for national planning and development. The presentation was faultless and excellent. It raised my hope in Nigeria
However, I was taken aback in 2003 when I was preparing to contest for house of Representative election and I needed to provide my birth certificate for party screening. Having left my birth certificate in Florida, I went to the local office of NPC in my constituency, Igboora to collect a birth certificate but the officer told me that it can only be issued at the state level because they had no computer at local government levels. I got the shock of my life when I got to the NPC’s office at Ibadan. I was told that a virus entered the NPC’s computer system and destroyed all the demographic information for the 1990 census. In view of this, I was requested to do an affidavit/declaration of age before the NPC would issue me a declaration of birth. Every responsible government agency should keep a back-up for vital information like the nation’s census. Apart from this, the information should be protected and kept safely to prevent penetration by the hardest virus. This does not happen in other countries and I as a person strongly believe that the virus in this case was either human or human-made. This is a devastating sabotage. An American does not require any affidavit to collect copies of his birth certificate from the various offices of Vital Statistics in the county of his birth. All he requires is identification that the birth certificate to be collected belongs to him. The computer prints the birth certificate within minutes. I am sure our NPC must have acquired the same technology for processing of birth certificates.
Without mincing words, this is a great waste to the country. The way the virus entered the system has not been probed, no one has been questioned and no one has been arrested or probed for flushing out several million of Naira out of Nigeria’s purse in the name of this virus. With the conduct of another census earlier this year and the on-going processing of the data collected, has someone started breeding the virus that will destroy the result? Or is someone working on anti-virus software to protect the information and safe the country from further wastages? Have we learnt to keep a back-up for the information?
There is no way any country will move forward if the hard earned resources are wasted in this way and nobody is held accountable for it. I was enumerated in the last two censuses in Nigeria (1991 and 2006). I can boldly say that the conducts of the enumerators are commendable and the data collected should be reliable. However, Census does not end with the enumeration, collation and processing of the data. An accurate census is not an end itself. It, should process the data collated to a reliable source of information for the government for a reasonable period of time.
Akinyemi Akinlabi Miami Gardens Florida, USA
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