The Yoruba Global Alliance has kicked against the planned census built for April 2023, saying the dire state of insecurity will only make for a skewed exercise in favour of a certain demography.
This is according to a statement signed by Dr Amos Arogundade Akingba, President and Chief Tola Adeniyi, Chairman of Council of the alliance.
The Yoruba Global Alliance, a foremost self-determination organisation, said it “condemns unequivocally this invidious and obviously self-serving political miscalculation and misadventure.”
According to the statement, “It is inconceivable that any serious-minded government should ever consider human population enumeration amidst an atmosphere of unprecedented insecurity, mistrust, unbridled corruption, and pervasive economic woes. It would be like a similar exercise conducted in 1974 which the subsequent Murtala Muhammed Military junta immediately jettisoned on assumption of office in 1975.
“What on earth could be the rationale for seeking to do a national headcount at this point in time, especially amidst rumours and permutations that the Unitary government in Abuja may have other tricks up its sleeves regarding holding national elections slated for March next year?
“The programmed census is ignominious mischief towards a predetermined end of imposing false demographics on Nigeria to the advantage of the Fulani hegemony. Nigerians cannot be deceived any longer.
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“Human population Census requires meticulous planning, including but not limited to cartographic capturing, enumeration of houses and other dwelling places, comprehensive physical counting of human heads all over the country and, of course, a huge manpower outlay.
“In a situation where guardians and parents have stopped allowing their children and wards to proceed to mandatory Youths Service Corps outside their immediate environment, and hundreds of thousands have fled their homesteads because of pampered marauding human butchers, euphemistically tagged bandits, where will the government import enumerators from?
“We should admit the obvious fact that Nigeria is at war with itself. Census exercises are never conducted in a war situation.
“More than 4 million Nigerians are scattered in Internally Displaced Persons camps all over the country most especially in the far Northern states of the country and Niger State. Who is going to count people who have been sentenced to humongous suffering by their own people in a country where suspicious terrorism holds sway?”
The organisation said it calls on the National Assembly and “well-meaning Nigerians most especially respectable elders who knew Nigeria when it enjoyed a good measure of civilization and civility, to urge President Muhammadu Buhari to halt this unwarranted assault.”
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