The opposition All Peoples Congress (APC) has voiced “deep concern and strong objection” over its exclusion from the Technical Committee established for the upcoming 2025/2026 National Population and Housing Census.

The party has called the omission “unacceptable” and “an affront to democratic principles,” casting serious doubt on the sincerity and inclusiveness of the census process.

In a letter addressed to the Chief Census Officer, the APC challenged a recent public notice from Statistics Sierra Leone (Stats SL) that claimed the Advisory, Technical, and Publicity Committees “comprise representatives from all political parties.”

The APC asserts this statement is “factually inaccurate,” stating that as the largest opposition party, it is not represented on the crucial Technical Committee.

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The APC views its exclusion from a committee responsible for reviewing implementation timelines, advising on data collection instrument design, and overseeing recruitment and training as a “serious breach of trust” and a “direct threat to the integrity of the entire census process.” The party argues this “signals bad faith” and “undermines the very foundations of transparency and fairness” required for such a national exercise.

Further concerns were raised regarding the preparedness for the census, with the APC noting Stats SL’s “public admission that there was no finalized Project Document at the time of the census proclamation and that only a draft version exists, which is yet to be made public.” This, the party states, “compounds our concern about the level of preparedness, accountability, and strategic direction.”

While commending the adoption of digital technology for data collection, the APC highlighted “systemic and infrastructural challenges” in Sierra Leone that could undermine its feasibility. These include a “persistent lack of internet access in rural communities,” posing risks to real-time data synchronization and GPS accuracy. The party also expressed “grave concerns regarding data security, server vulnerability, and the lack of transparency about where and how census data will be stored and protected.” The APC demands “immediate and unambiguous clarification” on how these foreseeable shortcomings will be addressed.

The party also raised alarms over the census timeline, specifically that data analysis, reporting, and dissemination from March 2027 to December 2027 “falls perilously short” of the Recommendation 38(b) window for utilizing data to inform boundary delimitation ahead of the 2028 general elections. The APC contends this “contradiction of Section 38(b) of the Tripartite Committee Report makes it patently clear that the timing of the census proclamation was politically motivated,” designed to “delay the process to interfere with democratic timelines and institutional arrangements.”

The APC “categorically rejects this manipulation of the census for partisan ends” and has urged the Moral Guarantors of the Tripatrie agreement to reassess the agreement’s timeline.

The party warned it “will not tolerate any attempt to disenfranchise the people of this country or undermine the constitutional order under the pretense of a delayed or compromised census process.” It urged the international community to recognize the stakes for Sierra Leone’s “peace, stability, and democratic progress,” emphasizing that the census’s integrity “must be preserved at all costs” and conducted in a “lawful, fair, inclusive, and professionally sound manner.”

Finally, the APC stressed the importance of recruitment for field staff, advocating that all outsourced field staff, including District Census Officers, Publicity Officers, Cartographic Leads, Mappers, Supervisors, and Enumerators, “must be recruited from their districts and chiefdoms of origin” to ensure local language fluency, terrain familiarity, and community trust. The party expressed its readiness to support the recruitment process to ensure “merit-based, transparent, and regionally sensitive hiring” and demanded that the Census Technical Committee, with an APC representative, be directly involved in the shortlisting, interviewing, and selection of all field personnel.

The APC reiterated its commitment to a credible census but warned it “will not sit idly by while our exclusion from key processes and the manipulation of national.”