By Mohamed Kamara

From April 27 1961 to present, the Ministry of Local Government and Community Affairs has no adequate, comprehensive records about the number of villages in Sierra Leone despite the increase of Chiefdoms, de-amalgamation of Chiefdom and additional region in the North West and this has made it extremely difficult for researchers. Students and even in populations censors.

This was revealed by Dr. Kadija Tholley a Sierra Leonean student at the University of North Dakorta in the USA who flew into Sierra Leone as part of her mission to complete her P.H.D Degree thesis.

She said the Dean of Studies has made it compulsory for political Science students who may choose to write their thesis based on the local governance system in their countries of origin. This include the number of Regions, districts, chiefdoms and more important the number of villages in their respective countries of origin.

She said another curiosity is related to what she called the outdated mechanisms to determine the number of births and deaths, annually. Tholley says that the modalities put in place by the National Civic Registration Authority (NCRA) is not appropriate to determine births and deaths of a nation. She said for the successful record of number of births and deaths annually, it has to begin with head men in villages, then to the Chiefdom authorities, then to the district councils, then to the regional officers and to the headquarter office for the data. She said this is the way develop countries develop their population data.