His Majesty William Wilberforce Nadiope IV of Busoga Kingdom has committed to championing the census exercise in his kingdom by urging his subjects to actively participate in the forthcoming National Housing and Population Census 2024.
“I as Kyabazinga, I will be enumerated here at Igenge palace starting with the census night. I have also accepted to become the number one champion in the forthcoming census in Busoga region,” he committed on Monday while meeting a team from Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) led by the Chief Statistician/Executive Director, Dr Mukiza Ndatira Mukiza and his Deputy Godfrey Nabongo, among others.
During the meeting held at Igenge Palace in Bugembe Town Council Jinja City, Kyabazinga Nadiope pledged and committed to work with UBOS during the census exercise.
“We are sure that we will benefit a lot as Busoga kingdom and Uganda at large, without proper planning, nothing much can be done. We do believe that through your new innovations, even Busoga will benefit a lot from planning for our people. Without statistics and data, we cannot do much.”
He thanked Dr Mukiza for accepting to set up a Statistical Office in the kingdom, train people and attach somebody to help in terms of gathering and carrying out statistical data analysis and interpretation.
“We shall sign a memorandum of understanding such that this kind of arrangement can commence as soon as yesterday. We know that UBOS has the capacity to carry out more training. We shall benefit from you apart from the forthcoming census through capacity-building training and so forth,” noted Kyabazinga.
He also used the opportunity to rally his subjects to participate in the census and accept to be counted.
“When we are counted, it will help us to know our incomes, to know the number of our people so we can properly plan for them, and understand where we need to add more efforts to develop Busoga kingdom,” he explained.
“I urge you to stay home since the government has made May 10 a public holiday. Stay home so they can count you and later benefit from government programs. I urge you to stay calm and embrace development. Accept to be counted so that you can be availed services and benefit from government programs,” he added.
We are almost ready- Dr Mukiza
In his speech, UBOS Chief Statistician Dr Mukiza assured the Kyabazinga that the Bureau will be ready by Friday to enumerate Ugandans.
Dr Mukiza’s visit to Busoga is one of the National Census publicity and awareness activities that UBOS has undertaken to ensure full participation and involvement of all nationals through the mobilization of leaders.
He updated the Kyabazinga on the forthcoming exercise and pledged Statistical Support to the Kingdom of Busoga.
“We finished almost all pre-census activities starting with the census roadmap, budget, training plan to setting up structures at the grassroots.”
He assured Kyabazinga that the information collected would be kept confidential and that the only information published would be in aggregate form.
“This census is going to be the first digital census. We are no longer going to come with huge files of paper. We shall be using tablets and my deputy has promised me that within one month, he will give the country preliminary results instead of taking two to three years to get the output,” said Dr Mukiza.
“We have distributed all the tablets to sub-counties and Your Majesty, we are now almost ready. We have teams sorting the remaining issues. By Friday, we shall have sorted out everything. We have created firewalls to our data centre services so that nobody can penetrate and hack our data.”
He also informed the King that the Statistics Office would become a lynchpin for the social transformation of the country.
“And you cannot achieve this if you don’t have the evidence which is data and statistics. We know that you cannot manage what you can’t measure.”
He said this statistics office unit will be equipped with one computer, and a laptop and two statisticians from the kingdom will be attached to UBOS for a period of one year.
“We shall start by signing a memorandum of understanding. At implementation, we shall also attach one staff to work on the strategic plan. After the census, we shall give you some tablets to keep collecting administrative data from your 11 chiefdoms.”
He said the general statistical reports have been projecting the Busoga kingdom as one of the poorest.
“We hope these other statistics we will get will help your kingdom and government to address these indicators,” he concluded.
