Be Part of Headcount or Lose Citizenship- Odimegwu

Mr. Festus Odimegwu, chairman, National Population Commission (NPC), has said that any Nigerian not captured in the next demographic survey beginning next year will not be recognised as a citizen of Nigeria, after the 2016 national population census.

This is clearly in violation of Nigerian nationality law unless the relevant sections of the 1999 Constitution are amended before the head count.

But Odimegwu was not done because he said that two no-go areas in the last census – religion and ethnicity – would be included in the 2016 exercise.

The NPC chairman who spoke at the second National Family Planning Conference in Abuja yesterday said that N600 billion needed to conduct the exercise and that the fund would be generated by the NPC from the sale of data to the private sector if the Federal Government cannot provide it.

“This is a commission where everything will work. You have to know religion and ethnic numbers for the country to work… We will raise money from the sale of data to the private sector to run the agency. The data base will help in national planning,” he added.

He said Nigeria could not develop if it continued planning as it does now, as it requires demographic data to plan properly.

For this reason, he said the NPC had set up a demographic data base structure, adding that they would produce reliable demographic data base that would cover 200,000 communities in the country.

“Anybody that is not covered in that census will not be part of Nigeria,” he said.

But  section 30(1)(2) and (3) of the 1999 Constitution provides that “the President may deprive a person, other than a person who is a citizen of Nigeria by birth or by registration, of his citizenship, if he is satisfied that such a person has, within a period of seven years after becoming naturalised, been sentenced to imprisonment for a term of not less than three years.

“The President shall deprive a person, other than a person who is citizen of Nigeria by birth, of his citizenship, if he is satisfied from the records of proceedings of a court of law or other tribunal or after due inquiry in accordance with regulations made by him, that – (a) the person has shown himself by act or speech to be disloyal towards the Federal Republic of Nigeria; or (b) the person has, during any war in which Nigeria was engaged, unlawfully traded with the enemy or been engaged in or associated with any business that was in the opinion of the president carried on in such a manner as to assist the enemy of Nigeria in that war, or unlawfully communicated with such enemy to the detriment of or with intent to cause damage to the interest of Nigeria.”