Postponed 2023 Census: Activities Still Underway – NPC

The National Population Commission, NPC has said, activities are still underway for the conduct of the postponed 2023 Population and Housing Census.

Federal Commission, NPC in charge of Osun State, Senator Mudasiru Hussein stated this on Tuesday in Osogbo during a chart with media executive of different organizations in the State.

He said the commission was more than ready to conduct the exercise as soon as it has the audience and approval of President Bola Tinubu.

The commissioner explained that the government of former president Muhammodu Buhari only postponed the exercise for the new input so as to have a robust, adequate and credible data and figures.

“President Asiwaju Bola Tinubu that I know is a man that love data and statistics. He likes to work with data and statistics and I am very sure that he would be interested in the conduct of the exercise.

“We are billed to meet him very soon, I mean our commission, all the federal commissioners across Nigeria, on the postponed census. Why the census was postponed is because former president Muhammodu Buhari wanted the new administration to have input in the conduct of the exercise.

“We have recruited over one million ad hoc staff for the conduct of the exercise and we have trained the ad hoc staff. The good thing about this census and where it is different from the previously conducted ones is that it is digitised. The last administration had paid for the devices we are going to use. They 850,000 out of which we had taken the delivery of 500,000 which are being kept with the CBN in various States. So we are more than ready” Senator Hussein stated.

The State Director, Moradeyo Adeboye NPC, disclosed that the commission has special enumeration to include its over one million ad hoc staff to also be counted during the exercise.

“We are not leaving any stakeholders out in our preparation. The press people have been involved, we have involved NOA, religious leaders, in fact, we have the census publicity committee that will meet with them before the actual date of the census. Everybody will be counted, even our adhoc staff and the staff of NPC will be counted.

“We have something we call the special population, so those special populations will be counted, we have methods of counting them which will be passed round to our supervisors and enumerators who will in turn go out to enumerate them” Adeboye said.