Whereas the bumpy start to the national housing and population census raised fears about the effectiveness of the exercise and the reliability of the data collected, attributing the mess to governance failure and lack of proper planning, UBOS has allayed any fears.

The statistics body dismissed these claims, stating that they are on course despite the few challenges.

According to the board Chairman of UBOS, Dr. Albert Byamugisha, they are on course.

"Those who have not been reached will be reached; where we had few enumerators, like in greater Kampala, we have added more."

According to UBOS, the exercise is at 30% progress, with over 2.6 million households enumerated out of the estimated 8.7 million, attributing the exercise a success so far.

The UBOS board Chairman says that the issues of tablet glitches, untrained enumerators, and allowances were addressed, attributing the failure to the local government.

The security of enumerators has also raised concern, with a number losing their lives to people opposed to the exercise.

Dr. Byamugisha says they are working with security agencies to tackle the matter but urged Ugandans to embrace the exercise.

Leaders and civil society expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of the exercise, attributing the shortcomings to governance failure, hence seeing no value for the taxpayers' money.

According to politician and lawyer Peter Walubiri, it's clearly a failure of governance.

"Expect the worst; some form of results will turn out, but don't expect a serious census; trash in, trash out," Walubiri said.