Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Lagos State on Saturday disagreed with the Chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC), Alhaji Sumaila Makama, on the success rate of the ongoing national head count.
While Makama had stressed that the census had so far achieved 70 per cent success, Tinubu put the success recorded at between 40 per cent and 45 per cent.
Speaking to reporters at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) Intensive Care Unit, the governor maintained that Makama got it wrong with his figure.
He said: �I dispute that. Mathematically, he cannot be right unless they (NPC) are working towards a specific target of figure, which they expected to get at the end of the exercise.
�Are they working to a specific answer? Because you have to know the population target that you have before you can measure the 70 per cent in the first place. Again, I dispute that because I have monitored everyday. The exercise is about 40 per cent successful in Lagos State.
�By my own analysis, you lost the first two days to payments struggles. That was Tuesday and Wednesday. And rain also delayed the distribution network as well as other logistic problems.
�We are now on the sixth day, which represents about 55 per cent of the time out. We have lost two third of the productive time and there is no way in efficiency rating that the NPC could have achieved 70 per cent.
�If we have lost day one, two and three, so if you take those three days divided by seven, you have about 28, 30 per cent . So, if you take 30 per cent of the 100 per cent, you have 70 per cent and if you have lost that, there is no way you can have 70 per cent enumeration success. No, I totally disagree with him.�
The governor noted that the two-day extension granted by President Olusegun Obasanjo would only achieve the desired result if materials and personnel were made available.
�We�ve gotten the planning of the census wrong. All these time we were wasting in payment of allowances is nonsense, all the logistics ought to have been concluded one week before the commencement of the exercise then the census would have started on a clean note and we wouldn�t have had all the problems we are now experiencing�.
�Census is about planning, essentially planning goes with development, if you get the planning wrong you get the census wrong and the whole exercise is rubbish�.