Though the Chairman, National Population Commission (NPC), Mr. Eze Duruiheoma has said that conducting a national population census in Nigeria was not feasible this year, the real reason behind the failure was because it was not captured in the 2017 budget.
Apart from not being captured in the 2017 budget, census conduct every ten years was not captured in the 1999 constitution but only appeared on the Census Act. Experts say this was the reason behind governments toiling with the major tool in national planning.
Besides, analysts have started querying how a country suffering recession will continue to be planning and making national budgets on mere speculation and estimation of its budget.
It would be recalled that the last census in Nigeria was held in 2006.
In an interview, Duruiheoma had said that part of the reason why census will not hold this was that President Muhammadu Buhari had to make a proclamation to the world that Nigeria was about to conduct a census before the commencement of a national headcounts and that had not been made.