The National Population Commission, NPC, says the national population and housing census to be conducted in few days time would help with accurate data to be utilized for development planning within Nigeria and internationally.
A National Commissioner at the commission, Dr Ismaila Sulaiman stated this during a One Day Special Summit on National Population and Housing Census organised by the Kano state government north Western Nigeria to mobilize people for the excercise.
Dr. Sulaiman said that Nigeria was a signatory to International Population census agreements, especially the United Nations.
“Which expects nations to conduct a census every ten years so that the global community can also plan to achieve overall global development goals,” he said.
According to him, the Commission has covered 99 percent of Nigeria with a physical presence despite impending security challenges in some parts of the country.
He also stated that the remaining places it could not physically reached were estimated according to the United Nations High Breed Enumeration Areas which is supervised by the UN Resident Technical Adviser.
“Though people talk about places of insecurity, they mention Borno state, they mention Zamfara state and others, I want to tell you that the commission has covered 99 percent of the federation with physical presence. It might be surprising that we have done it, but we have.
“The only remaining that we are not able to go there physically, we were able to estimate the Enumeration Areas,” he said.
He said the Agency has recruited no fewer than 55,000 Adhoc staff to prosecute the 2023 Population Census exercise in Kano state.
He explained that the adhoc staff were made up of Enumerators, Supervisors, Field Coordinators and Facilitators and
they are going to be provided with handheld devices where our questionnaire and maps are loaded.
Confidence Okwuchi
