That NPC’s billions for census

When a delegation of the Nigeria Population Commission, NPC, led by the Chairman and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Eze Duru-Iheoma, visited President Muhammadu Buhari last week to make presentation about the activities of his commission, it was an eye opener of some sorts, especially with regards to the proposed census of 2016. By 2016, it will be exactly 10 years since the last head count of 2006. That head count happened under the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. While there’s no argument over the significance and importance of a head count, how Nigeria continually wastes scarce resources in carrying out certain functions is truly scary.

With a bill of N273 billion and an additional N10 billion to kick-start operations, this means that Nigeria will spend a total of N283 billion for next year’s census! Unfortunately, in the last couple of years, this country has spent money in other biometric ventures: voter registration exercise, bank verification numbering, driver’s license, motor vehicle registration, GSM biometric registration, national identity card registration scheme, etc. Unfortunately none of these schemes was ever thought about to be worth sitting back to evaluate in order to see the most cost effective way to carry out these registrations.

It really does not make sense to hold these independent identification exercises when the outcomes are expected to be the same. The same process that is used to extract information while trying to get a driver’s license is the same way to get registered as a telephone user in Nigeria. At the last figures, not less than 120 million telephone lines are said to have been registered. While it is true that some persons have more than one line, but this is what a biometric system is supposed to distill and let us know where these individuals live, work and play. After all, that’s the essence of the population census. It is therefore reassuring that the President indeed asked the commission to find a way to unify all the various identification schemes so far carried out in the name of Nigeria. And we hereby add that there will be no need to recount those already captured and that’s what technology can do.

This is so because from other climes, the cost of carrying out similar census is far lower per head. With our current bill, this amounts to nearly $1.4 billion. Our population is estimated at 170 million, however countries such as China and India with more than one billion people each, conducted their census with far less money. As it stands, it appears each scheme by government in Nigeria is simply to allow some individuals scheme money out of our system. it does not matter if the project is repeated so long as some people find a way to make huge amounts of cash, the government will be “satisfied”, otherwise there is nothing to show why we should spend money on national identity card, voter's card, driver’s license, etc yet want to spend over $1 billion to count ourselves.

The last census that was conducted in Nigeria cost about N50 billion. Let's assume as it is customary that the budget is doubled, that will make it a hundred billion naira. With the additional biometric introduction, add another N50 billion that will make the project cost about N150 billion. This means that the country will be saving over N100 billion from the bill submitted to the president last week by the commission. Now in the whole world, it is only the United States whose census bill is more than that of Nigeria. Even at that, the US has always complained and is looking at how to reform their head count processes. The last census we conducted was heavily supported by donor agencies therefore; it is safe to assume that Nigeria probably spent less that N10 billion in 2006.

And for the biometric system, which has become a standard way of stealing our money, what has happened to all the devices used by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC? What has happened to the equipment used by telecom companies for their own biometric capture and what has happened to banks biometric capture machines? We need to find a way to borrow those devices in order to use them to provide the service of next year. As a country, we cannot continue to spend money to repeat the same schemes every time.

In streamlining the budget for 2016 census therefore, the bill for acquiring bio metrics must be well slashed. Apart from that other costs must be cut down to meet with our financial realities. Otherwise we might as well postpone the head count by another year or two. We do not need additional N150 billion or less to carry out our head count. After that all other biometric schemes must stop. Let our data be streamlined so that any other agency or a company that needs information can obtain same from NPC and pay for it.

#editorial