Chairman, National Population Commission, Chief Festus Odimegwu
The Chairman of the National Population Commission, Chief Festus Odimegwu, has resigned his appointment.
He gave no reason for his action in a letter dated October 17, 2013 which he addressed to President Goodluck Jonathan.
The Special Assistant (Media) to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr. Sam Nwaobasi, confirmed this.
He said Jonathan “has accepted the resignation of Eze Festus Odimegwu as chairman of the NPC with effect from Thursday, October 17, 2013.”
Nwaobasi added that the Commissioner representing Abia State in the NPC, Dr. Sam Ahaiwe, would act pending the appointment of a substantive chairman.
When our correspondent contacted Odimegwu, a former managing director of the Nigerian Breweries, to know why he resigned, he said he was in New York, United States.
“Please, I am in New York; go and get more details from your source”, he said and dropped the call.
Several calls put to his telephone thereafter were not answered.
But Presidency sources linked his resignation to his recent interviews in some national newspapers in which he said there had been no credible census in the country since 1816 because of manipulation.
Odimegwu had in an interview with journalists given a graphic analysis of how the various census exercises in the past had been manipulated.
He also recalled how the members of staff of the NPC protested against the commissioners during the 2006 census over alleged manipulation.
He had said, “Even the one conducted in 2006 isn’t credible. I’ve the records and evidence produced by scholars and professors of repute. This is not my report. If the current laws are not amended, the planned 2016 census will not succeed.
“During the 2006 census, workers locked out the commissioners over the creation of new areas. When the NPC did its own census in 2006 and said Lagos State was 9 million, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who was the governor then came out and declared that the population of Lagos was 17 million.
“Nigeria has run on falsehood for too long. We must stop this falsehood and put a stop to all of these. The Boko Haram problem is partly as a result of that. Because the 2006 census wasn’t correct, the former board of the NPC was unable to publish the figures.
“If they try it, there will be an uproar. We must make Nigeria work. We can’t do that unless we know the statistics. We can’t build infrastructure without demographic data. As long as the figures in Nigeria are wrong, corruption will continue to thrive. We must have an organised data before we can plan for Nigeria.”
The criticisms earned Odimegwu a query from the Federal Government following protests by the Kano State Governor, Alhaji Rabiu Kwakwanso, and the Arewa Consultative Forum.
But the Christian Association of Nigeria in the 19 Northern States and Abuja asked the government to withdraw the query which it said was political.
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