By Patrick Obia
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The Federal Government of Nigeria has concluded plans to conduct the 2023 agricultural census, three decades after.
The Statistician-General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of National Bureau of Statistics, NBS Prince Adeyemi Adeniran made this known while speaking as he declared open the training exercise for numerators held in Calabar, the Cross River State capital.
According to him, the Computer Assisted Personal Interface, CAPI, system will be deployed for the exercise. He further stated that logistics and paucity of funds hindered the conduct of the exercise three decades ago.
He said the census is to “provide us with data that the Government of Cross River State can use to plan for the agricultural sector, to know how many farmers we have in Cross River State, what type of agricultural activity they’re engaging in, and how many youths, women are engaged in agriculture. It will also help to provide the government with information about the situation of food security in the State.
“Economically, agriculture contributes about 50 percent of the Gross Domestic Product,GDP, of the federation and about 40 percent of the GDP of Cross River State.”
“NBS nowadays, is not using analogue methodology for data collation, we have gone digital for all our processes. The device they are going to use to collate data is not by paper; it is just like the phone you are holding. It is called ‘Computer Assisted Personal Interface’.”
On his part, the State Statistician-General, Dr. Josephat Ogar expressed joy for playing host to NBS.
“At the end of this training, training of trainers would have been done, so immediately the enumerators are trained in this five days exercise, they will be launched into the field to collate data; it is the very critical aspect of the survey,” he said, calling on stakeholders to assist those that will be carrying out the task.
He concluded by asserting that the exercise will prove claims that Cross River State is an agricultural hub.
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