Population & Elite

I've been encountered by two interesting articles from BBC Africa website. One is about census of Nigeria, which has been stalled since the last one was conducted in 1991. What got my interest is a relationship between political interests and counting population. According to the article, Nigerian constitute states that they have to consider balance between ethnicity in assigning positions at any levels of public administration. It means that composition of population must influence the number of positions to be occupied by respective ethnicities. National statistics are very important as bases in planning national development, and census is one of them. However, if it is possible that political interests may cause serious conflict, census will become something different from just counting population. Thus we need to think of this sensitivity of political interest, especially in the case that the national constitution also has crucial influence as the case of Nigeria. Second article is about conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia. What impressed me most was its history. During the period of colonisation by Italy, Eritrea was given some tastes of superiority to other parts of Ethiopia. It is a very famous issue of elitism in former colonised areas. Besides, another notorious affect of Cold War is there. The two super-power ravaged the area, and to make matters worse, UN did nothing effective to maintain peace during the same period. This long history of external intervention seems to contribute to the nature of intransigence of the stakeholders in the area. Some think that other indigenous culture must have something to do with their nature of inflexibility. I am quite a stranger in this area, but have felt the depth of this problem and some relevance to what I have learned in my master course so far.