By Chernor Alimamy Kamara
Provisional results of the 2021 Mid-Term Population Census say the Eastern Region is the most populated in the country.
Making report of the census public in Freetown yesterday Stats SL said the eastern province has a total population of one million, nine hundred and thirty nine thousand, one hundred and twenty two (1,939,122), that accounted for nine hundred and fifty three thousand, six hundred and one (953,601) males and nine hundred and eighty five thousand, five hundred and twenty one (985,521) females.
The eastern region comprises the three districts of Kailahun, Kenema and Kono.
The census report states that Kailahun District has a total population of five hundred and forty five thousand, nine hundred and forty seven (545,947), with two hundred and sixty seven thousand, five hundred and eighty six males (267,586) and two hundred and seventy eight thousand, three hundred sixty one (278,361) females.
Kenema District, according to the report accounted for a total population of seven hundred and seventy two thousand, four hundred and seventy two (772,472) with three hundred and seventy four thousand, one hundred and eighty three (374,183) males and three hundred and ninety eight thousand, two hundred and eighty nine (398,289) females.
Kono District, is said to have a total population of six hundred and twenty thousand, seven hundred and three (620,703), with three hundred and eleven thousand, eight hundred and thirty two (311,832) males and three hundred and eight thousand, eight hundred and seventy one (308,871) females.
Western area has a population of one million, two hundred and sixty-eight thousand, seven hundred and fifty seven (1, 268,757), whilst North/eastern region has one million, three hundred and eighteen thousand, eight hundred and thirty-one (1,318,831). For the north/western region it was one million, one hundred and eighty-six thousand, and fifty (1,186,050), whilst for the southern region the population captured was one million, eight hundred and thirty thousand, eight hundred and eighty one (1,830,881).
The total national result of the population based on the just concluded census is estimated at Seven Million, five hundred and forty one thousand, six hundred and forty one (7,541,641).
Chief Census Officer and Statistician- General, Professor Osman Sankoh, said the census was the first digitalized process to be held in the country.
He said after the World Bank decided to stop funding the activity, a day to the deployment of trained field staff for the main enumeration exercise across the country, the government gave approval to take over financing of its implementation.
He said they earlier faced challenges in securing the electronic tablets the Kenyan Government had promised to provide on loan, but through President Julius Maada Bio’s intervention, they received 20,000 tablets and 20,000 power banks from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.
Prof. Sankoh noted that when they implemented the 2015 census, they had challenges with the coding of localities due to the cartographic mapping exercise that happened almost a year before the census itself. “The delay was due to the 2014 Ebola outbreak,’’ he said.
He stressed that everyone in Sierra Leone was counted where he or she slept on the census night of 9 December 2021.
‘’So the population we report today is the census night population, where people slept on that night, whether or not those were their usual places of residence,’’ he said.
Meanwhile, the Secretary and Head of Secretariat, Interim Transitional Governance Committee (ITGC) of the main opposition All People’s Congress (APC) party, and Member of Parliament Abdul Kargbo in an interview with the BBC noted that there has been a normal trend of Census’s in Sierra Leone since independence. He said that trend has been distorted by the just concluded by the past census which he claimed was not reflective of the total population in the country.
He said the just announced result fueled great suspicion about the ‘dubious’ intention of the SLPP government to use the result of the midterm census to proceed with boundary delimitation and thus create new wards, constituencies and districts in their strong holds.
“In as much as elections were just behind the corner, my home was not counted, and several other homes were not counted,’’ he said. He noted that Members of Parliament had earlier expressed disappointment over the non-appearance of any census enumerator in their homes and communities. He said the 2023 elections are clearly under threat as a result.
Kargbo said they told their members not to participate in the census because the process did not go through the constitutional provision.
‘’This is an attempt to blatantly force the census down the throats of the people, because we are approaching 2023 elections and they know they needed to create more constituencies, and wards for themselves in their strongholds’’ he said.
The APC Secretary asserted that they will not accept the provisional result as presented and will oppose any attempt for delimitation of boundaries. He said that was why they deliberately told their supporters not to participate in the census.
The census shows that there are one hundred and nine thousand, one hundred and twenty one (109,121) more women than men in Sierra Leone.
There’s a total increase in the population by four hundred and forty nine thousand, five hundred and twenty eight (449,528) which is just 6 percent more, than the 2015 population.
Copyright © 2022 Politico Online (01/06/22)
