Pan Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, Afenifere, has called on President Mohammadu Buhari to stop conduct of the 2023 national census scheduled to hold next month.
It said it was an unthinkable insistence of the Buhari administration to conduct the 2023
National Census in spite of the objective realities which make such an important national exercise most inauspicious in timing and impossible in credible implementation.
The body said it advised against the conduct of the census in the same year of a general election in a paper it presented at the National Consultative Forum on the 2023 Census.
This was contained in a communique at the end of its monthly meeting at the Ogun State residence of Pa Ayo Adebanjo and signed by Sola Ebiseni.
It said it was a confusing for the government to expect participation in head count bycitizens still incensed and distraught by the trauma of violence and brigandage of the elections or by those in IDP camps within their country in whose ancestral homes terrorists in occupation would be counted as new indigenes.
Afenifere said: “That all factors considered, including its inability to supervise a transparent electoral process, a lesser headcount exercise, the integrity deficiency of this administration is abysmally compounded in
conducting census which partisan disputes in Nigeria is often at the level of communities, states and
ethnic nationalities having been politicised overtime.
” Afenifere decries the most insensitive deployment of over 100 bilion Naira on this wasteful exercise as scandalous and an economic offence.
“There is no compelling reason why the census must be held by the expiring Buhari administration and we call for all steps and preparations in that regards to be stopped.”
Afenifere also urged the judiciary to ensure that all petitions in respect of the Presidential elections are timely and justly resolved before the end of the tenure of the Buhari administration as the only way the confidence of Nigerians in its intervention may be earned.
The Nation
