The National Population Commission, NPC, has commenced the training of 99 Field Workers in Gombe State, Northeast Nigeria.
This is in preparatory to the first fully digitized Trial Census in Nigeria, which is a precursor to the next Population and Housing Census, slated for April 2023.
The Trial Census will only be conducted in selected areas and one fully covered local government area in each state across the country.
In Gombe State, enumeration will take place in 8 Local Government Areas, LGAs, with the exception of Gombe, Funa-Kaye, and Kaltungo LGAs, because they had already been captured in the 2nd pre-test.
In all, there will be 45 Enumeration Areas, EAs, and two enumerators in each of the EAs.
Briefing journalists after declaring open the training session, the NPC Federal Commissioner in the State, Mr. Abubakar Danburam, said “there would be 90 enumerators and 9 supervisors in the field for the Trial Census.”
Mr. Danburam said various topics would be covered for the field officers during the training, to be complemented with deepened hands-on exercises and field personnel knowledge and skills.
He said; “Topics to be covered at the raining of the Trial Census field personnel are census methodology, planning, and operations, use of digital maps and Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI), building numbering and household listing, enumeration procedure, completion of Census Questionnaire, and use of historical events and special population.”
The training is expected to last for 12 days, beginning from June 27 to July 8, 2022 while building numbering and household listing would be for 6 days, from July 11 to 16, 2022 and the validation of the EAs would be for 3 days, from July 17 to 19th.
Mr. Danburam also said “the enumeration of persons would be from July 20 to 24 and the mop-up enumeration would be from July 25 to July 30, 2022.”
According to him, the objectives of the Trial Census would be to test all aspects of the census operations, such as planning and implementation, logistics, questionnaire design and format.
Others are; training procedures, fieldwork operations, publicity, payment system, data processing, and data tabulations and analysis.
Mr. Danburam said this would also assess the quality and usefulness of the EA maps that had been already been created, and determine the possible demographic as well as geographical changes that might have occurred in the EAs carved between 2016-2018 and their implications for census taking.
He called for the cooperation and support of the stakeholders and the general public for the successful conduct of the Trial Census.
Mr. Danburam appealed to security agents in the selected LGAs to assist in providing security for the field functionaries and materials.
He also called for the collaboration and cooperation of all stakeholders at ensuring the successful conduct of the Trial Census.
“I, therefore, wish to call on all key stakeholders, especially State Governments, Local Government Councils, and traditional institutions in the selected LGAs to extend support and assistance to the functionaries assigned to work within their domain,” Mr. Danburam said.
In all, 7 thousand 718 EAs have been selected for the Trial Census to test run suitability and readiness for the actual census in 2023.
However, some states have been selected for full LGA enumeration to test challenges around complete coverage under various scenarios such as in hard-to-reach areas, special populations, and rural-urban settings.
The recruitment of personnel, which is over one million, was carried out with fully digitalized systems electronically. It provided the opportunity of the Trial Census to test the feasibility of the e-recruitment for the 2023 Population and Housing Census.
The portal was also geo-fenced to only the selected areas, in line with the Commission’s decision to recruit personnel from communities, and all applications received were screened.
Mercy Chukwudiebere
