Middle Belt Forum rejects proposed census, claims IDPs, may be excluded

The Middle Belt Forum (MBF), said the President Bola Tinubu-led government should be concerned with ensuring the return of millions of displaced persons across Nigeria not conducting population and housing census.

The group’s National President, Dr. Pogu Bitrus, in a statement issued and made available to Newspot on Tuesday, said, conducting the census without addressing the IDP issues amounts to a deliberate manoeuvre to palm off false demography of a nation whose citizens have been driven from their habitations.

The statement noted that the MBF is completely averse to the position of the NPC when viewed against the current level of insecurity plaguing the country, especially the Middle Belt, believing that for the headcount to be successful and achieve its aims, the security of lives and overall security must be guaranteed.

Bitrus said, “The suspension of the exercise by the former administration came on the heels of protests by Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), mostly in the Middle Belt, that conducting the census with some of them in various IDP camps, would amount to excluding them for the exercise, among other reasons.”

“For now, what must be of primary focus to the Federal Government should not be on conducting population and housing census. What should be of priority is to ensure that the millions of displaced persons across Nigeria, especially in the Middle Belt Region, are provided with adequate security to return to where they were forced to flee from.”

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In Southern Borno, for instance, Boko Haram elements have carried out attacks on communities, forcing inhabitants to flee their ancestral land for safety. It is a fact that some of these citizens, who have been traumatised and turned into refugees in their own country and other neighbouring countries, are yet to return to their communities in the last 10 years.

In some states like Plateau, Niger, Benue, and Kaduna, communities have been decimated, with thousands of people chased out of their ancestral lands. In a clear demonstration of illegalities, the foreign occupiers of these towns have renamed these communities under the watch of security forces. Despite the condemnation and outcries against the forceful eviction of citizens from their natural habitation, the dream of fleeing indigenous people returning to their communities is still a mirage.