POPULATION CENSUS AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH EAST NIGERIA: STUDIES ON AKPAKWUME/NZE IN EZEDIKE CLAN OF ENUGU STATE

Abstract

Population censuses provide one of the keys to economic development planning in human societies. Statesmen positively manipulate these keys to formulate and as well implement policies that will stimulate growth and deepen development in their respective states. Development of course reduces vulnerability, crime rates and social vices in societies; and the people participate actively in economic development. These benefits of population censuses are clearly misunderstood by statesmen in Eastern Nigeria. Their attention is concentrated on the politics of how more states, local government councils, senatorial districts and other political constituencies will be created to their benefit. In this paper, we will explain how politics has shifted the focus of sustainable development plans offered by population censuses. The focus here is on the indifferent behavior of a large number of people in Akpakwume/Nze in Ezedike clan – a peripheral, rural micro society in Udi Local Government Council of Enugu State – concerning population censuses. Until now, no serious economic advantage has been taken by the government to develop the human and material potentials domiciled in this clan likewise other outlying, rural populations in South East geopolitical zone. The result is that up to the last population census in 2006, the people did not understand how their rural society in particular and the South East in general would benefit from their participation in a population census as a significant percentage of them refused to be enumerated.