By: Haja Hawa Koroma
There has been a lot of chaos amongst citizens of the Republic of Sierra Leone and some other stakeholders ever since the 2021 mid-term population and housing census results was announced by the Statistician General of Stats SL Prof Osman Sankoh.
The public has different opinions with regards the credibility and authenticity of the results; some are in denial whilst some are in acceptance of the outcome of the results.
It is no news that census results always comes with a backlash from the general public as people always have something to say about census results. Throughout the years that census has been conducted, this has always been the case. This mid-term census result is overly chaotic compared to previous census results because the chaos had started from the initial stage of the counting and collection of data and because the citizens were not in acceptance of the census in the first place it is not unforeseen that they will be in acceptance of the results.
Ever since the result was announced the opposition party (APC) has strongly condemned the credibility of the provisional mid-term census results because they feel like the results were not accurate and they were played in favor of the ruling Government which is the SLPP.
The APC party feels that this census in its entirety was a strategy used by the ruling party to secure their reign in the next upcoming elections which is fast approaching as the census results they (APC) claim shows to be in their favor.
In a statement released from the office of the APC party, it was stated that several letters of concern had been previously been addressed to development partners stating fact-based reasons why credible census data cannot be obtained amidst the level of unpreparedness of Statistics Sierra Leone. It further stated that Stats SL had rescheduled the enumeration exercise from December 2020 to April 2021, which underscores the deficiencies in the planning of such an exercise.
According to the press statement, on the 19th April 2021, the SLPP Government had forced through and improperly laid in Parliament the statutory instrument for the mid-term census. The instrument was brought to Parliament after Stats SL had already commenced with the cartographic mapping, a crucial antecedent to every census program which requires several months of preparation for a successful outcome.
The APC party has been consistent in its apprehension about the quality and standards of the mid-term census because they believe the whole census to be flawed in terms of processes, planning and implementation.
Thereby fueling speculations about the dubious intentions of the SLPP government to use the results of the mid-term census to proceed with boundary delimitation in order to create new wards, constituencies and districts to their advantage.
Furthermore, according to the statement, thirteen registered political parties including the APC in the Consortium of Progressive Political Parties (COPPP), had foresaw that the probability of failure of the mid-term census by far outweighs the justifications advanced for conducting a census midway into the 2022 Local Council Elections and the 2023 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections.
The statement also mentioned that even the World Bank had questioned the credibility of the mid-term census and had addressed a letter to the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Economic and Development Planning on the 7th December 2021, in which the World Bank conveyed its reservations about the credibility of the process
and withdrew its technical and financial support.
The APC had made public these concerns bearing in mind that the World Bank, UN Agencies such as UNFPA and other Development Partners have contributed immensely in ensuring that Sierra Leone conducts a credible and an all acceptable census.
The APC party thereby wishes to inform the public that they are not in acceptance of the provisional results as presented and will oppose any attempt to delimit boundaries using the discredited data and therefore called on all Sierra Leoneans and the international community to condemn this move and challenge the validity of the results as announced.
