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.