By Lawrence Williams
It is understood that an exercise of boundary delimitation will be conducted by the Electoral Commission based on the preliminary data of the 2021 Mid-Term Population and Housing Census.
In a letter dated June 2, Chief Electoral Commissioner Mohamed Konneh requested the statistician general to provide him the official population figures for every locality in the country as per the 2021 mid-term census. This data is meant to inform the demarcation of wards and constituencies.
However, the provisional results of this census have been largely contested by opposition parties and the National Elections Watch (NEW).
APC parliamentary leader Hon. Chernor R. M. Bah described the census as “illegal, flawed, and incredulous”. He said this is because the census instrument was not properly laid before the parliament.
The National Elections Watch also said the data is flawed and does not accurately reflect the demographic characteristics of the country. While many other groups and individuals have discredited the census results, the government and the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party have welcomed them.
The World Bank withdrew its support for on the eve of the start of the whole exercise on 7 December 2021, citing irregularities with the pilot census and training of enumerators. Since then, opposition parties and their supporters have intensified their boycott.
The bank stated that “all these outstanding actions are necessary and must be addressed prior to commencing data collection to minimize the risk of inadequate and poor data quality.”
Freetown City Council on Thursday presented its analysis of the census results. In its statement, official government statistics showing constant growth of the Western Urban population in contrast with those released by the national statistics office were cited. The urban population has been rising since 2004, the FCC said.