Census result: ACF, Balarabe Musa, Sani reacts
From Mustapha Saye, Kaduna

Prominent Northerners have expressed divergent views on the population census provisional result adopted and released last Tuesday by the federal government.
While Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), declined to make any pronouncement on the census figures, pleading for more time to study and analyse the results, President of the Civil Rights Congress and chairman of the Socialists Front, Malam Shehu Sani in his comments on the census figures argued that it failed to reflect the actual population of the country.
According to him, although the provisional census result was acceptable, it left so much to be desired, noting that going by the barrage of complaints that attended the last nation wide population census, many Nigerians and communities must have been left out of the exercise and therefore not part of the reckoning for the provisional result.
“It is welcome and acceptable but in the actual sense, it does not reflect the true population of Nigeria in the sense that many places were left unaccounted for and it also doesn’t include Nigerians living outside in other parts of Africa, Europe and the other parts of the world. So, we can actually say that these figures are the population of the people that were accessible to the National Population Commission,” he said.
On the disparity in the census figures between the Northern and the Southern parts of the country, Sani explained that “It is expected that the people in the North are more than those in the South for obvious reasons. One is polygamy. Two is early marriage and three is the absence of child spacing practice in the Northern parts of the country, and also for the basic fact that the South is more educated than the North. It also reflects on the fact that the North has an uncontrolled population growth.”
Our correspondent contacted the ACF Secretary General, Col. Hamid Ali (rtd) declined to speak on the matter for now and pleaded for time to enable the forum make informed comments on the adoption of the provisional census results saying a team of experts are currently analyzing the census results adding that the body will soon come out with its comments.
Said he: ‘’We won’t be able to give you any reaction for now. If we want to comment it will be after we have gone through it. We have some experts looking at the released figures now and I would not be able to tell you anything until they have analysed it and came out with their findings. We won’t be able to pass any comment now, with due respect,” the ACF secretary general said.
In the same vein, Former Governor of old Kaduna state and chairman of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, Alhaji Balarabe Musa told Daily Triumph that all he was concerned about regarding the provisional result was the total number of Nigerians, saying that the population distribution was of less importance to him, declining to comment further.
He explained that in the first place, ‘’I ‘m yet to see the figures released and secondly, I’m not a statistician with population expert. What I’m concerned about now is how many are we in Nigeria , I’m not even worried about the distribution,” he said.