Makama to commissioners:
Defend census result
with passion
By ONYINYECHI NWANGWU,
Abuja
Chairman, National
Population Commission (NPC), Chief Samu’la Danko Makama, has
tasked all the Federal Commissioners to utilise every
available medium in defending the 2006 census result.
He said despite all the
efforts put in by the commission in conducting the census in
2006, the result has been given unjustifiable and
unconstructive criticisms.
This is even as he urged
Nigerians to desist from unscientific inclination and
insinuations about the census result, insisting that the 2006
population and housing census was truly scientific and modern
poll.
Chief Makama stated this
in Abuja at a one-day sensitisation workshop on the result of
the 2006 population and housing census for Federal
Commissioners.
The NPC boss said that
the National Council of State has unanimously adopted the
final report of the 2006 census.
The council, according
to him, has advised the President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to
accept the result and lay the report on the table of each
House of Assembly as provided by the 1999 Constitution.
The workshop, the
chairman said, was to sensitise the commissioners on their
expected roles in educating the general public and
stakeholders on the accuracy and reliability of the2006 census
and their expected roles in guarding the result against
politically-inspired and unscientific criticisms.
" It is also expected to
equip the participants with the knowledge and skills to
properly project the accuracy and reliability of the 2006
census.
"The 2006 population and
housing poll is a truly scientific and modern census. Its
methodology and procedures compare favourably with any other
census even in the advanced world", he said.
Earlier in his remark,
the FCT NPC Commissioner, Alhaji Sani A. Sulieman, had said
that the deliberation at the meeting would go a long way in
re-positioning the NPC for discharge of its constitutional
mandate.
"With the adoption of
the result on ground, NPC is now set for dissemination of the
data generated from the national census".
"The nation can now
boast of adequate and reliable demographic data for planning.
It is my hope that this workshop will come up with feasible
and cost effective ways of making the 2006 census data
available and accessible to data users", he said.