Census: All Nigerians ’ll be counted, NPC assures
By Saheed Ibrahim
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The National Population Commission, NPC, has assured that mentally deranged, homeless people and every living being in Nigeria will be counted in the forthcoming 2023 census exercise.
This is just as the NPC said the 2023 census will be the first fully digitised exercise in Nigeria.
The assurance came at the one-day capacity building workshop for the state census publicity committee held in Akure yesterday.
NPC promised Nigerians that the 2023 census will have at least 98 per cent success.
The Commissioner representing Ondo State at National Population Commission, Prince Diran Iyantan said the purpose of the workshop was to further enhance the professionalism of the publicity committee members and their capacity to deliver on their mandates.
He described the committee as one of the most important committees to drive the census exercise due to the psyche of the public, as many people are usually reluctant to subscribe to government programmes.
Iyantan said Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredoluthought it wise to assemble the committee with seasoned professionals to have a seamless census exercise in the State.
Speaking on the digital innovations in the 2023 population and State Director, Oluyemi Tubosun Falusi said digitisation of the census is in line with UN recommendations.
He said the 2023 exercise will be the first digital census to be conducted by Nigeria noting that it will facilitate faster process, reduce error, track progress, ensure efficiency and ensure prompt publication of results.
While identifying some of the technological innovations introduced into the exercise as QA pad, EADpad, CSPro, enumeration dashboard, Falusi said the training, recruiting, deployment, conduct, analysis and publication and other processes .
He said a 5-tier strategy is being deployed for quality assurance, robust monitoring and evaluation system has been set up, adding that there will be a call centre and a situation room in the state to assess the daily progress of the exercise.
He said data analysis would be done promptly with available digital technology tools to ensure reports are published promptly.
Also, the Head of Department, Census, in the State, Dr Mrs. Olufunbi Olowookere noted that census in Nigeria had been irregular and the current population figures in the country have been on estimation and postulations, hence the need to conduct the population and housing census.
She added census is needed for economic and sociopolitical planning and implemention of programmes.
While saying the survey questionnaire has been translated into several languages in the country, stating census will get data in demographics, birth certification, migration, literacy, education characteristics, disability, economic characteristics, ICT, fertility, mortality and others.
Olowookere said there will be “census night’ to count the homeless and mentally deranged people, stressing that personnel for the exercise were being trained to have a hitch-free census .
Also, the Head of Technical Department, NPC in the state, Mr Olayinka Benjamin Rotimi assured that the exercise record 98 per cent success.
Speaking on how to generate media contents for the exercise, the Head of Public Affairs Department, Mrs. Olugbadeyomi Odunayo Oluseyi said journalists have been trained to improve professional media contents , inform, educate, enhance acceptability and refute negative perceptions and wrong criticisms of the exercise.