By Suleiman Anyalewechi
The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon Benjamin Kalu has called on the National Population Commission, NPC to, this time around, avail Nigeria its actual numerical strength.
This is even as he has commended Ndigbo for refraining from the ongoing nationwide protest against the prevailing economic hardship.
Kalu, representing Bende Federal Constituency of Abia state, who spoke at an inauguration dinner for Chief Emmanuel Trump Eke, the Commissioner representing Abia State on the new Board of NPC held in Abuja at the weekend ,said that knowing the accurate population figure remains an essential part of planning and spread of infrastructural facilities across the country.
According to him, it is no longer viable to be predicating the country’s economic planning policies on estimated population figure ,adding that it is high time the narrative was changed .
In a statement issued on Sunday March 17 2024 by his Media Adviser, Levinus Nwabuighiogu, the Deputy Speaker stressed that the foundation of the country’s economic planning is knowing the accurate population, and the country’s demographic structure.
” The charge to you people as Commissioners is to be honest. We don’t know our number in Nigeria. We can not be claiming that we are the giant of Africa when we don’t have an accurate statistics of our number as a Nation.
It is embarrassing . Each time they ask you of your population,you say about”…..That descriptive thing to our number? You people should make it exact .
When we call Ogun state ,you tell us the number . We call Abia ,you tell us.Total number in the South East ,you give us .Total in the South West ,North West, South South etc you give us so that we can plan because economic planning without actual knowledge of the population is a waste of time .
So the root of our economic planning is knowing our number and demography ,so that when we want do project allocation,the spread will be guided by the population. So census is what you have to do as a service to this nation.
Push it hard and make sure that when the result comes ,Nigerians will be glad to say yes ; we are 250 million. But I can assure you by the time you are done ,we might be 300 million ” Kalu stated.
The Deputy Speaker who noted that the present hard economic situation ,predated president Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s administration, expressed happiness that Ndigbo are not participating in the protest marches rocking some parts of the country.
While assuring that the Federal Government is working towards finding a lasting solution to the the problems facing the country, Rt Hon Kalu urged Ndigbo to continue to lend support to President Tinubu as according to him, the administration has so far giving a sense of belonging to the South Easterners.
” The president has shown us love despite the fact that we did not vote as we ought to have voted .He has shown us great love and it is about time we also reciprocated”
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