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| Chairman Senate Committee on ICT, Abdulfatai Buhari |
Senate Committee on Information, Communications and Technology (ICT) and Cybercrime, on Wednesday, warned the National Population Commission (NPC) to forthwith commence the preparation towards the successful conduct of the 2017 census exercise, saying Nigerians would not tolerate nor accept any flimsy excuse, after postponing it from 2016 till 2017.
The committee chairman, Senator Abdulfatai Buhari, gave this warning, while leading members of the committee to the commission‘s headquarters in Abuja, as part of their oversight functions to know the level of preparedness of the NPC towards the forthcoming nationwide census.
He lamented that agencies like NPC, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as well as the Nigeria Immigration Services (NIS), including many other government‘s agencies and parastatals, were backward because of lack of ICT knowledge or they intentionally ignored it.
Senator Buhari stated that Nigeria remained underdeveloped as successive governments refused to use the power of technology to get accurate results acceptable to all and sundry, pointing out that most developed countries used statistics of their populations to develop their economies.
According to him, “we are here to assist the NPC to get prepared, because you know the world has gone digital. We don’t want a situation where there will be a doubt or query after the census. You know things are so easy now with ICT and we want accuracy.
“They have already asked for extension that they want to do it next year. We believe there will be a lot of improvements, we should be able to do something great for this country, so we want a result of census that would be acceptable to all Nigerians,” he explained.
Responding, the NPC chairman, Chief Eze Duruiheoma, said the commission was constrained to postpone the exercise, due to financial problem, noting that the NPC under his leadership was well determined to bring out the best, among the exercises conducted so far in the country.
