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nairaland.net • View topic - Why Nigeria can do without Population Census

Why Nigeria can do without Population Census

Why Nigeria can do without Population Census

Postby Richard Akindele » Tue Jul 11, 2006 5:36 am

When was the last time you heard Britain, Canada, USA, etc conducting a census? They don't need to. Knowing the population of the country is basic. These developed nations also have fine grained population statistics of states, counties, districts, etc.

The first step in implementing any public plan is to know how many people are going to be served. A good analogy would be a restaurant. How does a restauranteur know how much food to cook on a given day? Well, the first step is to know how many people are likely to partronise that restaurant that day. That way, there won't be too little or too much food prepared.

Same thing that applies in a small restaurant, equally applies to a whole nation. A good country needs a count of its citizens in order to plan well.

So, how is it that developed nations never need to conduct a population census? It is because these nations have a national database of their citizens. In the UK, residents have National Insurance Number, in the USA, Social Security Number.

Why doesn't Nigeria implement the same thing? Are our leaders just not aware of where the rest of the world is? Or are they just not interested in the people?

As I see it, we still live in the past in Nigeria because there are so many other problems that we think needs solving first. Unfortunately, the issue of population count is something that should be taken seriously. If you know how many people you have to serve, you'd do a better job of serving them.

Let's come up with our own SSN, or NI.

In my follow up article, I'll examine the cost of to the government adopting such a system.
Last edited by Richard Akindele on Wed Jul 26, 2006 3:18 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Postby Richard Akindele » Tue Jul 11, 2006 5:47 am

Some may argue that it won't be easy to get every Nigerian to sign up and get a Social Security Number.

While that is true, it is doable nevertheless. It shouldn't happen overnight like we always try to get things done in Nigeria.

The way to do it is to tie a person's social security number to many things they do. Examples are: driver's license, business license, property license, opening a bank account, school registration, etc.

Each time a person goes to apply for any public service, he must present his Social Security Number, otherwise, he needs to go get registered first. People generally take things more seriously if it affects their well being in some manner.

With this strategy, we can have a total count of the whole nation in a few years, and do it without innundating the Social Security office with throngs of people.
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Postby Richard Akindele » Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:17 am

So, how much approximately would it cost the government to setup a Social Security system in Nigeria?

The anwser is, very little money.

Computers are inevitable of course. A central server would be needed in a place like Abuja.

Contrary to people's believe that such a system would cost a fortune, it actually won't. I've personally built servers, some of which handle 2 million+ hits a month, and cost me under $2,000 to build.

Nairaland.net is housed on a server that cost me under $1,000, with close to 100 other busy websites on the same machine. Yet, none of the websites is slow. I'm sure you can attest to the speed of this website.

Of course, I did not pay for installing and configuring any of the softwares, since that is my area of expertise. Also, I did not pay a penny for the softwares because everything is open source, which are Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Mail server, FTP server, etc.

So, depending on how many hits the machine for the Social Security Program is going to get per month, the cost of the computers can be scalled accordingly.

In general though, I would estimate the cost of building the central server at less than $5,000. That would be 5 machines setup in some type of computer cluster.

Once the server is running, each large city in Nigeria would also need computers in the Social Security office. Such computers don't need to be as powerful as the server, since they will simply connect to the server to read or write data. All the work is done on the server.

How would computers in different cities connect to the server? Via the Internet, or through dial-up connectivity. This stuff is not too difficult to setup, and unbelievably inexpensive.

With as little as $50,000, Nigeria could have a system setup that is capable of supplying up to the second data all across the country. By that I mean, if somebody signs up anywhere in the country, that data is available countrywide within a split second.
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Postby Richard Akindele » Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:27 am

We've determined how cheaply Nigeria can setup a computer system to create a national database of Nigerian citizens.

The next question then is, what software is going to be used to manager the data for these millions of Nigerians.

The answer to that is, there are Nigerians knowledgeable enough to write such softwares. I've personally written dozens of heavy duty programs that do way more than what such a Social Security Program would require.

With my experience, I can get such a program written in under 3 months if working on it full time. So, if a single individual like me can write the software in as little as 3 months, what is stopping Nigeria from starting to move forward on this very important project?
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Postby Richard Akindele » Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:35 am

What about Security?

How secure would it be for computers in cities across Nigeria to connect to the central server in Abuja?

The simple answer is, very secure.

Don't forget that billions of dollars worth of transactions take place across the Internet everyday. How is that possible? Well, it's possible through the use of various secure protocols available in Internet technology.

These protocols use several levels of encryption to ensure that the data is received the same way it was sent, and that the source and destination computers are authenticated before any kind of data is sent.

Thanks to Open Source software, all such secure systems are available, and free of charge.
Last edited by Richard Akindele on Tue Jul 11, 2006 3:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Richard Akindele » Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:41 am

Nigeria needs to move forward.

We can do it with computer technology.

Most importantly, we can do it at very little cost.

So, why is our government seating dormant and not doing a thing about implementing a Social Security Number system?

Well, maybe the people in power don't have a clue how little it really costs to get things done today without awarding tens of millions of dollars worth of contract. Or perhaps they don't want to do it the inexpensive way, since that means they don't get to steal more money from us in bogus billion Naira contracts.

But now that we know the facts, let's give it a try.

It's possible, if only we just try.
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Tinubu, a Role Model - Makama

Postby Richard Akindele » Wed Jul 26, 2006 1:38 am

Lagos State Governor, re-emphasized the importance of an accurate data base as a prerequisite for national development, adding, that without an accurate data, Nigeria cannot plan effectively. "It is time for Nigerians to start building faith in ourselves by ensuring that we get things right and ensure that we produce a very credible result from the population census exercise," he stated.

Asiwaju Tinubu appealed to the Commission to apply both flexibility and sensitivity in the process of releasing results of the Census as Nigerians are very sentimental about census exercises and figures.

Lagos State helmsman commended the efforts of the staff of the Commission to the success of the exercise especially in Lagos where the Federal Commissioner, Alhaji Yerima Giade did a yeoman's job.

The Governor reiterated his appreciation to the people of Lagos State for the overwhelming support which the exercise enjoyed in the state especially due to restriction of movement.

According to him, the experiment showed that Nigerians are a sophisticated set of people who are ready to do the bidding of their leaders provided such leaders are credible and have demonstrated a keen passion for the people's plight.

Earlier, Alhaji Makama had sought the assistance of the State Government in the implementation of the vital registration programme which according to him was part of the revised National Policy on Population and Sustainable Development launched recently by the President.

He further explaining that processing of data gathered during the census is currently going on at the seven data processing centers located in Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu, Port Harcourt, Kaduna, Kano and Yola with a centre handling between four to seven states.

Daily Champion.
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