PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

The next census

kudugana@yahoo.com

For three weeks running now the subject of this column have been the Nigerian census – its history, and its politics.  For the first two weeks I wrote about it and last week I published some of the reactions my articles provoked.  In publishing those reactions I had hoped I would be able to move on from the subject and talk about other things. 

However, two things happened last week that constrained me, at the risk of boring you, to say one more word about the subject before moving on.  The first was the launching of a pretest of the next census by the chairman of the National Population Commission, Mr. Samu’ila Danko Makama.  The pretest itself took off penultimate Monday, i.e. April 11 and lasted two days.

The aim of the pretest, according to the NPC chairman, was “to test instrument and evaluate proceedings for the next census.” Before this pretest the NPC had embarked upon a three-phase Enumeration Area Demarcation (EAD) exercise starting from July last year.  The first phase involved one local government each in six states, somewhat randomly selected, plus one area council in the Federal Capital Territory, making a total of seven.  Phase two in September/October last year involved one local government each in the 36 states plus one area council in FCT, making a total of 37.  The final phase, which started in January, was to cover all the remaining local governments and area councils in the country.  This phase is still going on and will hopefully end in August/September.

The more specific objective of penultimate Monday’s pretest of this three-phase EAD exercise was to evaluate its integrity and assess how many days it would take if the next census is to be accurate and reliable.

I fear that the outcome of the pretest will, to put it very mildly, be far from satisfactory.  This in turn may mean yet another controversial census that will dash the hope raised by at least the relative success of the last census in 1991 that the ghost of census fiascos in Nigeria has been finally buried. The magic wand that will banish this ghost for good is firmly in President Obasanjo’s hands.  The fate of the census hangs essentially on how the president waves the wand.  I will explain presently.

The second reason I returned to the subject of Nigeria’s census for the forth week running was a front page story in last Sunday’s Thisday which quoted Chief Emeka Anyaoku, former Commonwealth Secretary and a prominent member of the on-going National Political Reform Conference (NPRC), as drawing the attention of Nigerians to what he believed is the unwieldy and expensive structure of the Nigerian federation.

“What we have at the moment”, Thisday quoted Anyaoku as saying, “is extremely expensive to run.  It is a three-tier of government that gets fully funded from the federation account.  It BREEDS INJUSTICE AND INEQUITY LIKE IN THE CASE OF KANO…KANO WHOSE POPULATION IS LESS THAN HALF OF THE POPULATION OF LAGOS STATE HAS 44 LOCAL GOVERNMENTS WHILE LAGOS HAS 20.  If you base revenue allocation on local governments, Kano will get more than Lagos.  That breeds a feeling of inequity and injustice in the country and of course it leads to instability as in currently the case in the polity.” (Emphasis mine).

This is a rather extensive quote but when you weigh its length against the importance of its author in society and also against the significance of the sentiments he has thus expressed, it is not too extensive a quote.  Anyaoku, as we all know, is probably the most accomplished diplomat Nigeria has produced.  Much of his career was spent at the Commonwealth which he eventually headed.  He was also briefly President Shehu Shagari’s minister of foreign affairs.

As for the significance of his sentiments about the perceived injustice of one state getting more money from the federation account than another simply because of the “arbitrary” creation of local governments by previous central administrations, we all know that this is a sentiment that resonates with most Nigerians from the South. 

I agree with Anyaoku that the present structure of the Nigerian federation, with its 36 states and more than 700 local governments, is unwieldy and costly.  I also agree with him, up to a point, that there was much arbitrariness in the past in the creation of local governments, if not even in the creation of the states.  Even then I was extremely shocked to hear that Anyaoku, of all people, would base his concern about the unwieldy and costly structure of the Nigerian federation not on facts but on mere heresay.

Anyaoku is not an ordinary man on the street.  As a former Commonwealth Secretary and arguably Nigeria’s most accomplished diplomat, his words are regarded at home and abroad with the seriousness they deserve.  It was for this reason that I was shocked beyond belief to hear him quoted as saying Kano state has less than half of the population of Lagos state and there is therefore no justification for it to have more local governments than Lagos state.

By the last census in 1991, Kano state had a population of 5,810,470 while Lagos had 5,725,116.  This clearly puts Kano ahead of Lagos, albeit only marginally.  Sceptics may dispute these figures but they remain the official numbers of Nigerians in those states.  In any case not even the most sceptical person can claim that Kano, the largest and the most cosmopolitan city in Nigeria outside Lagos, is less than half the population of the former federal capital.

Clearly Anyaoku’s quotation, if indeed it is accurate, is a manifestation of deeply held belief among Nigerians from the South that the population figure of the North is mere fiction.  I have tried in my two consecutive articles on the Nigerian census to show that these beliefs have no basis whatsoever in geography and demography.  I have no intention of boring you by going over those reasons.  Sufficient to say that if Anyaoku, inspite of his cosmopolitanism and his intellect, would voice such blind prejudice, then Makama’s National Population Communication has an enormous, if not insurmountable, job ahead of it of educating Nigerians to help it conduct a successful census.

To come back to my first reason for devoting these pages to the subject of Nigerian census for four weeks running, Makama, it seems to me, will need a miracle to avoid a census fiasco because President Obasanjo, who holds the wand that can dispel the real and imminent danger the NPC chairman faces, seems himself to be under the spell of people who do not want him to waive his wand with fairness, equity and integrity.  Let me explain.

Following phase two of the EAD last year, the technocrats at the NPC started getting signals that its commissioners in the states, as indigenes of the states to which they were posted, were beginning to allow politics and other considerations get in the way of their work.  Reports were beginning to reach headquarters of the creation of enumeration areas more out of political, financial and other dubious considerations than out of technical ones.

To check this trend, the technocrats suggested to the chairman that he should post the commissioners not only out of their states of origin, but also out of their geo-political zones.  This way probably the most important cause for creating doubts about the integrity of the census figures within the states and nation-wide would have been eliminated.

The chairman agreed to this suggestion and accordingly wrote President Obasanjo for approval.  The president approved and directed the ministry of finance to release monies for the movements.  These were to have started in January.  Come January and a few of them started to move.  Then suddenly word came from the president that the movement should stop.   You don’t move your generals around, the president reportedly said, in the middle of a battle.

However, there is suspicion among keen observers of the politics of our census that the president reversed himself not because of the logic of war, but because some commissioners from the South-West persuaded him that unless they remained in their states of origin, there is no chance that the population of the South can be shown to be more than that of the North.

These suspicions may not be true, but it is hard to see what else persuaded the president to reverse himself.  Therefore if he wants to go down in history as becoming the second president, after General Ibrahim Babangida, to avoid a census fiasco, he should allow the cross-postings to go ahead even at this late stage of the enumeration area demarcation exercise.

Commissioners remaining in their states of origin, is, of course, not the only factor that can derail the census.  However, it is the single most important factor and the president would do well to revisit his decision to cancel his approval for the crossposting of the commissioners.

The NPC projection of the EA’s based on the 1991 census is 350,000, up from 212,000 in 1991.  There is a clear and imminent danger, according to sources in NPC, that this figure may reach an outrageous 500,000, if something is not done to stop politics from getting the better of our senses of integrity, justice and equity.