Udogie: N600 billion just to count Nigerians?

A RECENT Guardian Editorial described the plan by the National Population Commission (NPC) to spend N600 billion to conduct Nigeria’s census in 2016 as “outrageous and scandalous.” All over the world, census has always been a controversial and emotive undertaking.

Cost is just one controversy. Counting the number of people in any geographical location is a futile exercise. And also quite dangerous. Fifteen census officials were killed during South Africa’s population count in 2001 according to the Economist magazine. And there are places in Nigeria today that census officials will face high level of real and perceived risk to their personal safety. I hope the NPC has factored this into their calculations.

But why do people regard census as a futile exercise? Essentially because whatever figures you come up with are at best, estimates. Even in the U.S. with all its sophistication, census doesn’t reach 2 per cent of the population; while another 1 per cent of the population is double counted. This means that “the U.S. census is off by about 10 million people, plus or minus”, according to the book, Proofiness by Charles Seife. If the U.S. posts such dismal figures, one can only imagine the magnitude of Nigeria’s unreliability rate.

People have likened population census to attempting to count the number of live catfish and tilapia in a shallow pond. You row gently from one end of the pond to the other, counting the fish you see along the way. You come up with a count of 599 catfish and 301 tilapia, for a grand total of 900 fish in the pond. But as you can probably guess, the answer is off because your count is error-prone. One source of error is that the fish are constantly moving about. So it is certain that you will count some fish twice and others not at all.

And then, there are more subtle but equally powerful factors such as religion. Beware of counting people. Determining how many people are in a country is so important that it was written into the U.S. Constitution. But in wording the requirement, the drafters of the constitution were careful not to use the word, “count”. Instead, they preferred “enumeration.”  Why? According to the book, Proofiness, one theory is that people were afraid of taking a census that wasn’t approved by God. Recall that in the Bible, when King David called for an unsanctioned census, God punished him by sending down a plague that decimated 70,000 Israelites in three days.

But in all census undertakings worldwide, the singular most contentious issue is cost. Here there are reforms to the process of counting, sorry, enumerating people. But those countries that continue to rely on old-style “shoe-leather census” or “door-knocking” will continue to bleed money. In 2000, the U.S. census cost $6.5 billion. Ten years later in 2010, that cost had doubled to $13 billion, translating to $42 per head. Estimates are that “without fundamental reforms”, the next one could cost $30 billion.

By contrast, Finland, one of the first countries to ditch its shoe-leather census, saw expenses fall by more than 90 per cent between 1980 and 1990, and now completes its counts for around €1m ($1.44m) for 5.3m people, according to the Economist magazine.

So, Nigeria needs a change of plans if it is to drastically reduce the N600 billion it plans to spend on a census that will most likely be challenged and disputed, as have others before it. One strategy is to seek a different approach as many countries are already doing. Last year in Germany, the 80,000 census takers did not depend only on the house visits that privacy-conscious Germans find so troubling. Instead, they culled data from national employment records and local population registers. Only around 10 per cent of citizens were randomly selected for old-style surveys.

And during this census round (which ends in 2014), 17 European countries will use government databases in some way. In nine of the countries, government-held data will be the only source of information. Door-knocking is not just unpopular. It is costly. And can be dangerous.

Asia also offers some excellent case-studies in conducting cheap census. In February 2011, India’s census authority completed a year-long effort of tallying and biometrically registering its 1.2 billion residents. The census part cost just over 40 U.S. cents per head as against the U.S. rate of $42.

We will be watching as the miracle unfolds