South Sudan without population census as failed by enumerators and technical consultants

BY: Benny Gideon, Sudan

The position of South Sudan and its ruling political forces, the SPLM/A, is now clear in its capacity to refuse any foul play surrounding design, data processing and release of the data production such as the present hopeless census results that put South Sudan to 8,263,490 people an unacceptable population.

However, it was a direct transaction of children playing with fire when very important items of race and ethnicity were not included on the questionnaire to distinguish the tribal and religious background of the Southern Sudanese living in Northern States and particularly Khartoum State that gave raise to its present 5.2 million people and taken as Northerners.

The Khartoum Administration has ever been using South Sudanese population to claim their share of government seats and services at all levels to which these people are not beneficiaries. Is that your interest you Southerners to allow Arabs took advantage of your huge populace to allocate the assembly seats and provision of services while your brothers and sister are poorly represented?

Allow me to say enough is enough and right of self determination for the people of Southern Sudan and separation although disputed by some Southern politicians as different processes is undeniable. We must either secede from the north, if too confronting, sorry we must opt for the right of self determination, the language agreed in the CPA/2005, INC/2005 and ICSS/2005 respectively.

With the current census result, it is of course the first time ever in the history of our liberation struggle to involve South Sudanese to count themselves and process their own data. It took the census officials starting work from morning to midnight only to be surprised with such hopeless result.

Nevertheless, do not doubt the data processors but the problem was with the numerators, their supervisors and field officers and finally to the technical consultants in their different capacities, which lead to omissions and commission in defiance to the obligatory national duty entrusted upon them by the Government of Southern Sudan.

On the technical failure of the data processing, the consultants have contributory technical cheating in the provisions of the software program used between the Sudan Central Bureau of Statistics and Southern Sudan Centre for Census, Statistic and Evaluation.

I must repeatedly disclose it to the public that the scanning machine installed in Khartoum was set to accept all forms including empty ones or whether dirty without transcription while the same scanning machine installed in Rumbek, South Sudan, now present for confirmation do not accept any empty form or dirty ones. It took the census officials three weeks or so to transcript all dirty questionnaires from Abyei and other Southern States on to new forms for possible scanning and due processing requirements.

However, when asked as confirmed from sources why having the same machines but with different operation, hence the consultants admitted that they were forced by Khartoum to have access to the way they want it and denied any consultancy service as only done in the south. The SPLM/A must take this data into consideration and ask the census officials, if doubtful for further evidence

In light of the above reasons, this is beyond reasonable doubt construed as high treason committed by both enumerators who intentionally left some unused questionnaires during the enumeration exercise and without proper checking by their supervisors and field officers, and further to the technical consultants who brought the same software programs but with different operation between the north and the south.

As a breach to the sovereignty and national integrity pertaining to the national census, statistics and survey as stipulated in schedule (A) item 27 of the ICSS/2005 and any other legal instruments enforced, the census contractors as per failed units and the consultants must be professionally held accountable and brought to justice in South Sudan in accordance with the provisions of the Penal Code/2008 and the Code Of Criminal Procedures Act/2008 respectively.

This is to avoid any repetition of such waste of resources, energy and time for future census and to only allow those committed under national obligation, sovereignty and integrity of the county to do the next population census of 2018 A.D

Beny Gideon Mabor is opinion writer and can be reach at [email protected]