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Last Updated: Wednesday, November 10th, 2004 HOME | Previous Page EU commits N17billion to 2005 census   By Uchenna Awom National Assembly Correspondent, Abuja   The European Union (EU) has pledged to contribute 50.2percent of the total cost of the 2005 census being planned by Nigeria. That translates to about 110 million Euros or about N17 billion, the Chairman, National Population Commission (NPC), Samu�ila Danko Makama, has said. The Chairman also revealed that the Commission uncovered a fraud of N19 million claimed to have been paid as balance of 50 percent leave grant of year 2002 to some staff. Addressing journalists on the progress report of the commission ahead of the 2005 census, Makama said the EU�s pledge which will be finally approved at the meeting of member states in Brussels on November 24, 2004, will be spent on payment of honorarium to the census field workers, advocacy and public enlightenment. He said the fund is expected to start flowing in from January 2005. The commission he added is deeply appreciative of the kind gestures of the international community in sharing Nigeria�s problems in census taking adding that the NPC has also realized that the census is not just a purely Nigerian affair but also of international significance since the data generated from the 2005 census cannot be the exclusive property of Nigeria. On the fraud issue, the Chairman said the fraud was discovered when the accounts staff from its headquarters turned in their report of a pay parade in the states. The committee set up to examine the report he said, discovered that the sum of about N19 million claimed to have been paid as balance of 50 percent leave grant of the year 2002 had not been satisfactorily accounted for. Eight officers involved in the scam according to Makama, have been issued querries with five of them already suspended to give room for further investigations. The money, he said, is a salary account and not from the funds meant for the conduct of the census. However, Makama stated that the phase III Enumeration Area Demarcation (EAD) is scheduled to commence from January to July 2005, in order to complete the demarcation of the outstanding 730 local government areas within seven months.         Copyright� 2004. All Rights Reserved. Independent Newspapers Limited Block5, Plot 7D, Wempco Road, Ogba, P.M.B. 21777, Ikeja, Lagos State, Nigeria. www.independentng.com e-mail: [email protected] Designed By Powered By DNet.

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