Minister Musasizi acknowledged the errors made in the census result

NILE POST

The Ministry of Finance has issued a public apology for the errors that appeared in the recently released 2024 census results, which were compiled by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS).

State Minister of Finance for General Duties, Henry Musasizi, acknowledged the mistakes and apologized to the Ugandan public during an interview with Nile Post in Mbarara.

Musasizi explained that the errors were due to transpositions, where figures were mistakenly switched between the Bagisu, Acholi, and Bakiga populations. "The figure for the Bakiga was overstated by about 500,000, and the Acholi figure was mistakenly attributed to the Bagisu," Musasizi said, assuring the public that the errors had been corrected. He emphasized that the data was available but had been misallocated in the final report.

Musasizi further urged Ugandans to trust the work of experts and pledged that greater care would be taken in the future to prevent such mistakes. “In the future, we shall be more thorough and ensure no errors of this nature occur. However, we take every experience as a learning opportunity, and I apologize on behalf of the Ministry of Finance, which spearheaded the census exercise," he added.

Earlier this week, UBOS Acting Deputy Executive Director, Vincent Ssenono, also addressed the issue, explaining that the error occurred during the final compilation of the report. He noted that this led to incorrect data presentation, particularly in the tribal population statistics.

Ssenono assured the public that the 2024 census figures were accurate and that the errors were linked to data from the 2014 census, which had been incorrectly reported.

This misreporting impacted the percentage calculations for the 2024 results but has since been rectified.

Despite the errors, both UBOS and the Ministry of Finance remain confident that the corrected census results provide a reliable basis for future planning and development.