The Census..

The census seems to have made up for lost time. I only know of one person who wasn’t counted in my petit cercle – a young chap who lives in Kubwa, one of the satellite towns of Abuja. He’s worried that not being counted will stand against him – the authorities may believe him to have tried to avoid the count at some future time. I suggested he go to the National Population Commission and ask to be counted.

With over one hundred names, addresses, occupations, fuel-knowledge (kerosene or gas) etc. the govt will have some powerful information for data mining. A combination of State of Origin plus surname (if categorised into types) would theoretically be sufficient to aggregate on the basis of ethnicity if required. Apparently it is going to take four months before initial results emerge.

A lot of people have been denigrating the whole exercise and faulting whatever figures come out as false in advance. This is a bit silly. As in all statistical surveys, I’m sure there’ll also be a margin of error produced, which will yield a fairly accurate bandwidth. So, on the whole, the NPC has done a good job, at this stage. Now we all need to get back to work, after a week of suspended animation.

It’s easy to see how desperately hard the past few days have been on street traders, phone card sellers, newspaper vendors and the like. Denied their daily income, it must have been tough going under the blare of the sun. The enthusiasm with which young guys tried to flog me phone cards and newspapers on the way to work this morning says it all. With kerosene prices through the roof, being poor in Nigeria is a daily struggle to survive.