A
abujagirl
Guest
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Yakubu Dogara, has kicked against the proposed 2018 census.
Dogara in a issued by his Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Turaki Hassan, said, “I won’t advise anyone to conduct national census in 2018. I said it before that if we are not going to achieve it in 2017, then we should just forget it until after 2019.
“If you conduct census just before the elections, there will be so much pressure, crises and a lure for people to manipulate the figures for political reasons, such that the agency cannot even cope with.
“So, it is better for a fresh administration to conduct this exercise from the beginning of that administration when we do not have any pressure of elections in sight. Then we may have something that resembles reality, but I can bet on it that if the census is conducted in 2018, the outcome will be unreliable.
“Seriously speaking, because I know who we are and I know the kind of litigation, backlash and the pressure that come with this kind of exercise and we don’t need that now to be candid. We have so many challenges; let’s empower the agency to keep building on the blocks that it will leverage upon in the future in order to conduct the exercise but doing it in 2018, honestly, it is nothing I would advocate.”
Dogara in a issued by his Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs, Mr. Turaki Hassan, said, “I won’t advise anyone to conduct national census in 2018. I said it before that if we are not going to achieve it in 2017, then we should just forget it until after 2019.
“If you conduct census just before the elections, there will be so much pressure, crises and a lure for people to manipulate the figures for political reasons, such that the agency cannot even cope with.
“So, it is better for a fresh administration to conduct this exercise from the beginning of that administration when we do not have any pressure of elections in sight. Then we may have something that resembles reality, but I can bet on it that if the census is conducted in 2018, the outcome will be unreliable.
“Seriously speaking, because I know who we are and I know the kind of litigation, backlash and the pressure that come with this kind of exercise and we don’t need that now to be candid. We have so many challenges; let’s empower the agency to keep building on the blocks that it will leverage upon in the future in order to conduct the exercise but doing it in 2018, honestly, it is nothing I would advocate.”