The House of Representatives raised worry Monday about the National Population Commission’s readiness to conduct a nationwide population and housing census.
The parliamentarian who spoke during the examination of the 2024 budget performance voiced concern about the inaccuracies in the materials presented to the Committee by its Chairman, Mr. Jimi Odimayo. According to the document titled ‘2023 census strategy and implementation plan’ that was provided to the Committee, N841,97 billion was budgeted for the 2023 population and housing census to include pre-enumeration, actual enumeration, and post-enumeration activities.
According to the Commission’s 2024 Appropriation of N12.77 billion, the sum of N1.13 billion was allotted for capital expenditure, N818,93 billion for overhead 8,272, and N10.82 billion was allocated for personal cost.
While discussing the performance of capital expenditure, Chairman of the Commission Nasiru Kwara revealed that N1.1 billion was issued and fully utilized (97.38 percent released to date), leaving a balance of N29.54 million.
Things took a fresh turn when Lagos legislator Okey Onuakalusi stated that the supplemental budget granted for the NPC in 2024 was still being investigated, prompting the Committee to visit the Central Bank of Nigeria.
He further accused the NPC Chairman of deceiving the Committee by giving a 97.38 percent budget performance on Capital Expenditure for the anticipated release.
Onuakalusi said: “What you told us here is anticipatory funds. So if they’re anticipatory funds based on budget performance, it means that they are subject to query because you’re claiming 97.38 per cent.“I know from the fact that many of the percentages here are anticipatory funds.
Now, if it’s anticipatory funds, how are we sure that the budget performance given to us is correct? Because they don’t act on anticipatory funds and expect results. That’s why you must establish what percentage of the money you have gotten. Is it 40 per cent or 60 per cent?”
Meanwhile, the NPC proposed N18.28bn for capital expenditure in 2025, N1.17 bn as overhead and N17.76bn as personnel cost but the lawmakers chided the commission for what they call an ‘abysmally low’ capital expenditure proposal.
From the total sum of N18.28bn proposed as capital expenditure for 2025, the Commission is to spend N1.1bn on the national population and housing census; N4bn on the purchase of official vehicles; N12bn on the construction of permanent office buildings; and N350m on the expansion of registration centres and registration of birth and death, ad-hoc registration, among others.
This is as the NPC also proposed N40m for census research, documentation and archiving (research on historical events, special populations-herdsmen, fishermen, homeless persons, migrant farmers, etc.Others include N90m on the commemoration of World Population Day/Annual Population Census Day; N35m on the generation of statistics for internal and international migration in Nigeria and N50m on budget preparation and implementation and verification of fixed assets.
For the personnel cost in the 2025 fiscal year, the Commission proposed N2.38bn as regular allowances, N1.21bn as contributory pension, N12.57bn for salary and N606.83m, for National Health Insurance Scheme, totalling N16.76bn.
According to Punch Online, While briefing the lawmakers on the reasons for the aborted conduct of the population census, Kwara disclosed that the Commission was about 80 per cent ready for the exercise.“We had prepared almost up to 80 per cent for the conduct of census 2023, but somehow because of transition and other exigencies, the then President decided that we should allow the incoming administration to take over the leadership of the conduct of the census.
“The preparation is still ongoing, but I would like to report that we lost out on conducting our census under the 2020 rounds of census. So new rules are up under the 2030 rounds of the census that require some adjustments to consider,” stressing that the NPC is rethinking the entire for 2026.
According to him, while deciding to postpone the population census, the Federal Executive Council anticipated the need for the conduct of the population and housing census 17 years after the last exercise.