APC CONDEMNS THE PROVISIONAL MID- TERM CENSUS RESULTS AS ANNOUNCED BY STATISTICS SIERRA LEONE ON 31 ST MAY 2022
The All Peoples Congress (APC) Party received with consternation the announcement made by the Statistician General and National Census Officer of the Provisional Results of the controversial Mid-Term Census for Sierra Leone.
The APC party previously addressed several letters of concern to development partners stating fact-based reasons why credible census data cannot be obtained amidst the level of unpreparedness of Statistics Sierra Leone. Statistics Sierra Leone rescheduled the enumeration exercise from December 2020 to April 2021, which underscores the deficiencies in the planning of such an exercise.
On 19th April 2021, the SLPP led government forced through and improperly laid in Parliament the Statutory Instrument for the Mid-Term Census. The Instrument was brought to Parliament after Statistics-Sierra Leone had already commenced cartographic mapping, a crucial antecedent to every census program which requires several months of preparation for a successful outcome.
Fellow Sierra Leoneans and members of the International Community will recall that the APC Party has been consistent in its apprehensions about the quality and standards of the mid-term census because it was flawed in terms of processes, planning and implementation, thereby fuelling speculations about the dubious intentions of the SLPP Government to use the results of
I l Page the Mid- Term census to proceed with boundary delimitation and thus create new wards, constituencies and districts to their advantage.
Similarly, thirteen (13) registered political parties including the APC in the Consortium of Progressive Political Parties (COPPP) 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:
On 7th December 2021, World Bank addressed a letter to the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Economic and Development Planning in which the World Bank conveyed its reservations about the credibility of the process and withdrew its technical and financial support. The letter reads in part as follows;
“To date, while work on most action points is underway with some completed, several criticaZ action points require further technical work to be satisfactorily addressed including evaluation of the pilot census, the field operation plan for the enumeration, and ensuring enumerators are adequately trained. AZZ these outstanding actions are necessary and must be addressed prior to commencing data collection to minimize the risk of inadequate and poor data quality. There is insufficient time between now and December 10, 2021 to satisfactorily address aZZ pending actions.
Therefore, white our technical team remains available to provide continued preparatory support, regretfuZZy we wiZZ be unable to provide further technical assistance nor disburse any further funds under IDA Grant No. D584-SL to support the mid-term population census following the announced inception of data collection on December 10, 2021.”
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 making sure that Sierra Leone conducts credible and all acceptable census.
2 1 P of any ulterior motive; and considering the need for the Census to receive international acceptability, Statistics — Sierra Leone should have taken the correct step to reschedule the Mid-Term Census until all of those legitimate concerns were addressed. Regrettably, the SLPP led government decided to proceed \sith the flawed Mid-Term Census on schedule and risk its international credibilitv. In the process, Statistics – Sierra Leone wasted ‘vzluable national resources which could have been more profitably used to finance other more appealing national projects than the widely condemned Hid-Term Census. The challenges faced in the field and the failure to receive natiomxide cooperation and acceptance did not come as a surprise.
The APC Partv to further make it known that in the meetings of the
Political Parties Liaison Committee (PPLC) the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone ((EC-SL) repeatedly stated that they were going to rely on the results of the flawed Mid-Term census to proceed with their proposed boundary delimitation and pave the way for political gerrymander.
The SLPP’s call on the Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone to proceed with the delimitation of constituency boundaries, and for the Government to dismiss all condemnations of the census result clearly confirms that the SLPP led government had ulterior motive in pushing ahead with the Mid-Term census even when it was apparent that they were not technically and procedurally carried out.
We as a political party attended the Advisory Committee meeting of 30th May 2022 in which we were informed about Statistics’s intention to pronounce the 2021 Mid-Term Census provisional result on 31st May 2022. This came as a shock to members of the Advisory Committee who were supposed to constitute the highest governing body for the Census. We were of the opinion that the meeting was to discuss experiences from the field and advise on next steps instead we were deceptively lured to endorse a flawed process.
The APC Party completely rejects the outcome of the mid Term Census and wishes it to be knovtn that if this crooked process is allowed to proceed unchecked, it will undermine the democratic gains we have all painstakingly tried to nurture and sustain, and tv\ill further threaten the peace and security of our beloved country. The 2023 elections are now clearly under threat and we call on our development partners and the International Community to intervene now and help salvage the situation.
The APC Party wishes it to be known that we will not accept the provisional results as presented and will oppose any attempts to delimit boundaries using these discredited data, in which for instance the total number of registered voters in the Western area Urban District in 2018 elections far exceeds the total population in the 2021 Mid-Term Census provisional result for same.
We therefore call on all Sierra Leoneans and the International Community to condemn this move and challenge the validity of the results as announced.
Long live the APC!
Long live Sierra Leone!
Signed:
Hon. Abdul Kargbo
Secretary and Head of the APC National Secretariat ITGC
