2009 census was inflated by one million

The 2009 population census was inflated by one million people, according to revised post-count figures tabled by Planning Minister Wycliffe Oparanya in Parliament.

Oparanya told the House on Tuesday the Government would appeal a recent court ruling outlawing his powers to nullify a census as stipulated by the Statistics Act.

Northern Kenya legislators where most of the anomalies occurred protested the report while Ikolomani MP Boni Khalwale argued that even the revised figures still give the sparsely populated arid districts an unfair share of new electoral constituencies.

A post-census revision of statistics disclosed unscientific population growths in Turkana Central, Lagdera, Wajir and Mandera districts that required a repeat census to verify cause of anomalies but this could not happen because residents of these areas went to court and obtained an injunction against the intention.

"The smoothed figures are the ones we are going to launch," Oparanya said referring to the new post census count deduced following the release of the figures in 2010.

According to figures published by the minister on Tuesday, population after the post-census survey stands at 37 million, a drop from the preliminary figure of 38.6 million returned late October 2010 following the August 2009 count.

He said that the ministry and Department of Statistics discovered that in the said districts there were "serious inconsistencies" in growth rates and unexplained age and sex ratios.

The ministry proceeded to perform a post census which discovered that Mandera East constituency had exceeded its population by 174,710, Mandera Central by 166,027, Turkana North by 100,000 and Mandera West by 108,675.