December 12, (THEWILL) – Member representing Cross River State on the board of the National Population Commission, Navy Captain Charles Ogwa (retd.), spoke with BASSEY ANIEKAN on the preparation of the Commission for the next national population census scheduled to hold in 2022.
Excerpts:
Tell us about your experience on the board of the National Police Commission
We were sworn in by President Muhammadu Buhari on November 28, 2018. So it means I am running three years. It has been quite an interesting experience.
Interesting in a sense that when I was sworn in alongside my other colleagues from other states, the President charged us to conduct a credible population and housing census. With that zeal, when we got to the commission we started working towards it.
In line with the President’s directive, how prepared are you for the exercise scheduled to come up next year?
The preparation to conduct a census in 2016 has started. The basic thing to do, if you want to conduct a census, is to demarcate and delineate the areas. So they had already started with the first and second phases up to the 6th phase of the Enumeration Area Demarcation (EAD) in the whole country. When we resumed, the state had done only four of those 6 phases. Four local governments areas had been demarcated. With that zeal, we made serious efforts and the President gave us the approval to take on the Enumeration Area Demarcation fully and we did.
Today, I want to say here that work in 97 per cent of the 774 local government areas in the country has been completed.
We have finished enumeration in Cross River State, except the small mop up exercise that is about to be rounded off. With the completion of the core foundation, we decided to jump onto the next phase, which is to test the methodology and instruments to be used for the census. We are going to test the data we have now. We did the first pre test in Cross River State in Etung and Calabar Municipality. We had some challenges and worked on it.
Now the second pre-test is on. We have just finished a 10-day training for the functionaries and they have gone to the field proper, which is to last between December 3 and 10. At the end of the day, we will also analyse this one and see whether the instruments we have put in place to run the census, the applications, the maps, everything, will lead us to do a trial census. Afterward we conduct the main census in the second quarter of 2022.
So, I think it has been a good outing for me so far.
We have been very busy and running around to make sure that we conduct this census. It has been a worthwhile experience since I resumed.
You recently said the next census will be digitised and paper work will be eliminated. Can you explain this?
During the 2006 census, it was paper and pen. There was no Personal Data Assistant (PDA), which are the pads that look like phones. Every application is downloaded and you just use it and begin to punch.
In 2006, they gave you a paper questionnaire, which you filled. So how can a six months-old baby fill the questionnaire? The father will fill the questionnaire for him.
But now, you just give us the information and it is captured. The questionnaire is already captured in the digital assistant held by each enumerator. There is no need for paper anymore. Nobody is filling anything. That is why it is digital. This will eliminate a lot of human errors and influences and also reduce interference almost zero.
After the 2006 census, some states and stakeholders started disputing the figures. As you prepare for the next census, how are you working with all these stakeholders, including the UNFPA, to minimise or possibly eliminate these disputes?
The acceptability of a census conducted in any country is the main uphill task. The commission may feel you have done a very good job, but what about the acceptability? I want to tell you here that the UNFPA is heavily in support of Nigeria. In fact, the overall boss of UNFPA visited the country last week and was graciously received by the commission and gave us their word.
They have also facilitated the appointment of a census technical Adviser for the coming census and he is not Nigerian. He is a professional who has huge experience in census taking and has resumed.
Other stakeholders are all ready. The United Nations itself is very ready because people feel that the country should have accurate demographic data.
Talking about the preparations, Cross River State is peculiar because of its closeness to Cameroon, the maritime situation and also the issue of Ambazonia. How challenging is this?
During the Enumeration Area Demarcation exercise, we had some of these challenges but with the support of many people, especially the local government functionaries, the traditional rulers and the machinery put in place, we were able to overcome some of these challenges and we had a smooth exercise.
For this pre-test, we have carefully chosen Oju. It is a village that shares a border with Cameroon in Akamkpa Local Government Area.
Some people may be worried that people fleeing Cameroon may enter Nigeria and eventually get counted as Nigerians. What do you intend to do about that kind of situation?
During the listing of houses, every house has a household and the people are living in houses and not in the forest. If we have enumerated those houses, it means they will be enumerated.
We do not enumerate anybody who is not in a household. If we come to enumerate your place and you say you have five sons and one is in the hospital, we don’t need to tell you to go and bring him. If the hospital is within the Enumerated Area (EA), he will be counted under you. We are not going to disrupt the system.
How about state governments?
For every exercise we are conducting, the state governors, the local government areas, as well as the communities are all written to. In every local government area, there are offices of the National Population Commission headed by a controller. The controller’s job for every exercise is sensitisation and advocacy.
They are in the field now. The controllers were trained specially on advocacy and sensitisation, which they are already doing in the field. So everyone is involved, even traditional rulers. The only thing is the attitude of our people here. Governments mostly think that when you say you are doing something it is about money. A local government chairman went as far as telling the commissioner that “your people should not come. I don’t have money.” But nobody had written a letter to him to request money.
We wrote a letter to him and said, “We are running an exercise in your local government area. He is the chief security officer, shouldn’t we tell him? And also, he should be interested because the census is for the people and it is by the people, even governance is by the people. So I am pleading that everybody should be involved. That is why I say this census will rebuild the country.
There are other government agencies like INEC and NIMC that need the data you will generate. What is your level of partnership with them?
We have written to them and we have been receiving good responses. The African Development Bank has received our letter and it has acknowledged it.
At least, for acknowledging they have received our letter means there is hope that they will partner with us. INEC has been partnering with the population commission, even during the EAD exercise, because the data we generate helps INEC to create polling units and wards. So we are with them. The NIMC used to be part of the population commission and a member of the commission sits in the NIMC board. That is enough partnership, isn’t it?
You have been in the saddle representing Cross River for a few years. What are your major achievements and challenges?
First and foremost, before I resumed a lot of people did not know about the population commission, but with the directive we had from our headquarters, we had to do a lot of sensitization. I want to tell you that during the EAD exercise, I was always in the field. If you go to a place now and mention the National Population Commission, in fact no traditional ruler will tell you: “I don’t know them, or I have not heard about them.” That gives me joy. It means that when we are taking census, the volume of sensitisation s we will be reinforcing what is already on ground. That is a major breakthrough.
How about the challenges?
Normally, you will have challenges in anything you do. The major one is that our people are adamant and very complacent. It baffles me that in some communities we visit, the main stakeholders don’t even come and the people you see are the chiefs and traditional rulers. We use them because other stakeholders think we are asking them for money, whereas the commission is not asking anybody to bring money. In every exercise we conduct, we write to the stakeholders, telling them we need their support in the areas of advocacy and sensitization. That is the emphasis and nothing else. Basically, those are the challenges.
Still talking about security challenges, there are some inter and intra communal crises in the state. How do you manoeuvre around them as you prepare?
During the EAD, we did not send our functionaries to any place that is a flashpoint but when the turbulence has calmed down. That is what we are doing now. We call it ‘mop up’. We have finished with Ebijakara, Erei in Biase, the communities in Obubra and Ezzi in Ebonyi. The turbulence there has calmed down and our people have gone there to mop up and demarcate the place. The situation is also calm up there in Yal. My Benue counterpart is also there and we are mopping up. Once we tidy up the challenges, it means Cross River is good to go.
Also in the state, we have quite a few communities that are hard to reach like Belegete in Obanliku, Ukwa in Odukpani. How far have you gone with these areas?
It will shock you to know that my functionaries have reached there. I personally went to Belegete and monitored what they were doing. There is no community in Cross River that has a structure, even if it is a hut, that we did not reach for demarcation. The moment that hut has been captured in the national frame, during census taking, the enumerators will go there because it means there is a household there.
How about Bakassi?
There are 33 communities in Bakassi that we visited.
I negotiated with the militants and they gave us cover because I spoke to them about the need for us to demarcate the area. I went with my demarcators, did the job for five days and came back peacefully. So we have covered basically every part of Cross River State.
What message do you have for people who have not fully welcomed the exercise in some communities?
Let everybody take this census activity seriously, as it affects the state. Because whether you like it or not, the demographic data generated from the census is the one to be used for economic, health, educational planning, respectively, even for revenue sharing. People see it as a form of political activity, because when it involves sharing revenue, the indices they use in Nigeria for sharing revenue is population. So I charge everybody to get up, mobilise and support the national population commission for any pre-census activity that is taking place. Get interested in any area so that at the end of the day, we will come out fine and the state will not be left out.
As a retired military officer, how did your experience in the military prepare you for this job?
First and foremost, military officers have the highest exposure both in geopolitics and military politics. I am bold to say it anywhere. The training you get in the military equips you not only for military operations, but also aids you to attain civil power and you know what that means.
It is not that you just get up and bring money and give it out. We want these things to happen anywhere we are. We want things to happen.
So this training gave me an edge on this job and I am doing it. I call it second missionary journey because I have served the country as a military officer and now I am serving the country in the commission. I am glad to do that. I will be glad that during my time, a census is taken and we will come out tops.
How would you like to be judged or assessed at the end of your tenure?
I don’t live up to people’s expectations. What I do is to get satisfied and do the right thing. If I am able to do the right thing for this state, most especially the major thing we are doing now, with the census taking place next year, second quarter and the census figures of this state comes out well without questions or doubts, then let the people judge and say they give glory to God.
About the Author
THEWILL Correspondent, Aniekan Bassey has over six years experience that spans across several fields in print journalism including development communication, sexual reproductive and health rights issues, crime, climate change, social justice, business and human interest stories.
