Budget and Economic Planning Minister, Sen. Abubakar Bagudu, has commended the National Population Commission for strategies put in place to ensure a successful population census exercise, in the country.
This commendation was made on Thursday, 21st September 2023, when Federal Commissioners from the Population Commission paid him a courtesy visit, in Abuja.
Sen. Bagudu said that the NPC had done a good job in mapping out and enumerating areas of demarcation of the 774 LGAs across all States of the federation, for the census.
He noted that NPC being a constitutional body was vested with trust from what was presented to the Ministry, which he said, he had been very familiar with.
Speaking earlier, the chairman of the National Population Commission, Hon.Nadir Isa Kwarra, said that the commission had demarcated 774 LGAs across the States of the federation that developed an hybrid data collection applications of census pad.
Hon. Kwarra pointed out that the commission in collaboration with stakeholders had finalised and commenced the presentation of the final list of the localities, mostly the local governments, to citizens at the grassroot.
The chairman explained that the post enumeration survey had been conducted through measure coverage error due to either under coverage of person and in some cases households/housing units in the previous trial census.
The chairman expressed further that the commission had commissioned a situation room, call centre and census dashboard at the headquarters of the Commission where the conduct of the census exercise could b monitored.
He added that training of functionaries for the 2023 PHC using three modes, including self-learning, virtual classroom mode and the in person training.
Hon. Kwarra said that NPC had trained a total of 61,548 of census methodology personnel who were to be equipped to step down the training at the LGA levels before the census was called off earlier.
He also said that the commission had visited and briefed President Tinubu on the position of the preparation for the next census and that the President had directed the commission to continue with the advocacy and publicity for the next census and promised that a new date for the census would be announced.
Kwarra said that the commission would generate credible, reliable and acceptable data that would help to achieved the renewed Hope Agenda of Mr. President in planning for sustainable socio - economic development.