By Ayodele Oni
The National Population Commission, (NPC), has called for an urgent commencement of the process of conducting the 2023 population and Housing Census to enable the country fit into the global data and benchmark.
The exercise, which was fixed to have been conducted last month before the terminal date of the immediate administration, was shifted to yet to be determined state.
The Federal Commissioner, NPC, Diran Iyantan made the call at a parley with Media Executives in Ondo State on the 2023 population and Housing Census in Akure, the Ondo state capital at the weekend.
Iyantan said the sensitivity of the exercise is to move with the train of the time, which heightens the fact that Nigeria is at risk of missing out.
“Not conducting a census soon means that Nigeria, which is the most populous country in Africa, risks being out of scene with the international community census scheme potentially affecting our ability to compare with the global benchmark.”
According to him, the immediate past President, Muhammadu Buhari said he had discussed with President Bola Tinubu on the need to as a matter of urgency, continue the process of completing of the exercise.
Iyantan, who explained that the census had multidimensional purpose for the development of the country, appealed to the media family to make sure that the process is not delayed.
The purpose of the parley, he stated, was to update the media on the status of operation of the census, pointing that the commission has taken up to 30 different activities it had done for a successful census.
Iyantan, who reeled out several preparatory activities that had been carried out towards the census among many others to include; the Enumeration Area Demarcation, conduct of pre-tests and trial census, recruitment and training of census field staff, procurement and configuration of personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), establishment of ICT infrastructures across the country and logistics support and advocate and publicity activities.
In his goodwill message, the Ondo state Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Journalists NUJ, Leke Adegbite who was represented by the Union’s state Treasurer, Fatima Muraina, who said the media have been helping the NPC in the mobilization of citizenry on the census before it was postponed, assured of the media continuous support whenever the NPC is ready to carry out the exercise.
Adegbite said members of the union are always ready to enlighten the people and the public through their media platforms on the need to be part of the exercise.
He urged the commission to also continue to work with the media so that the right and accurate activities of NPC would be reported to the public.
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