Hundreds of rampaging youths yesterday went rioting atthe Area 1 office of the National Population Commission (NPC) in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The Protesters who claimed they were ad hoc staff protesting the non-payment of their census allowance by NPC, barricaded all the routes leading to the Area 1 office of the commission, smashing cars and chasing away innocent passers-by.
The Nigerian Police responded immediately with trucks loads of armed security personnel who fired teargas into the air to disperse the youths.
THISDAY gathered that the rioters mainly enumerators were irked by the exclusion of their names from the list of those to be paid census allowance.
However the NPC Director of Public Affairs, Hajia Fati Kadiri who spoke to THISDAY on the Phone said most of the protesters were not genuine census ad hoc workers.
She said among them were those “who deserted the exercise after collecting the initial training allowance only to come back thinking they would also be paid the final allowance”.
“NPC is not going to tolerate this, we are not going to be intimated into paying people who have not worked during the census”, she said.
She said �instead it is the people that actually worked, whose list we have cross-checked with all the co-ordinators and supervisors that will be paid the final allowance.�
“The problem of many of them who bolted away and did not participate in the enumeration exercise is that they thought they are going be paid.
“We are using the list we have in our system and which is also in the system of our development partners to conduct payment of allowances to ad-hoc staff”.
When THISDAY took her up on the ad hoc workers who displayed the commission’s ID card during the demonstration, Kadiri said some of them who have the ID cards, got it during their training, but bolted away afterwards without taking part in the actual enumeration exercise.
Apr12006