By Jonathan Ugbal
The Commissioner representing Cross River State on the board of the National Population Commission, NPC, Navy Captain Charles Ogwa (rtd) says the postponement of the 2023 census is not a setback as it will enable the Commission to deliver effectively on its mandate of carrying out the first digital enumeration of people and houses in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s immediate past President, Muhammadu Buhari had in April approved the postponement of the Census. And, Ogwa, during an interaction with journalists on Monday in Calabar explained what the commission has been doing and why a tentative date has not been issued by the Federal Government.
“It is all-inclusive data that will be generated. Demographic data is basically for development, planning, and driving of decisions that will concern the population, so it will be better for the new administration to be fully in charge of the census,” he said.
Ogwa who said special populations will also be captured, stated that the data captured will have far lesser political interference, fraud and will generate revenue for the Country due to its inclusivity and usability in line with global best practices.
He averred that the preparatory process was 80 percent completed as the major activities including training, Enumeration Area Demarcation, (EAD) had been carried out with the Commission continuing with online training in anticipation of the tentative date.
“We started with the EAD which is the basis for a census framework. In all the 774 Local Governments, we successfully demarcated every corner including Cross River State, and in the end, we got a framework that we are going to use for the census.
“During the EAD where the Country and the State were divided into smaller units called Enumeration Areas, EAs, we engaged high-level satellite imagery to bring out the framework so that before the Commission took the decision to conduct the first-ever digital census for the country, we had decided in the commission that instead of just making preparations for the 2023 Census, we should make preparations for future ones too so that the country will not be spending so much in the conduct of Censuses. All the EAs were geo-referenced with coordinates assigned to them. That is why we have a national framework which means anytime any government says look, we want to do a census, it will just be an update to that framework,” Ogwa said.
Ogwa who disclosed that “during the Council of State approval for the census, the pronouncement was that (we should) take a date at the end of all election matters,” adding that: “If we had gone ahead to conduct the census between 3rd and 7th of May, the tribunals would not have been concluded.”
He disclosed that the Commission began preparations for the census in 2014 and has continued interfacing with stakeholders including the presentation of a revised strategy paper to President Bola Tinubu. He said the acceptability of the process and fine-tuning of preparations were also part of the reasons for the postponement and insisted that this does not reflect a setback.
“This gave the Commission the opportunity to finetune all the processes and systems within this period because it is just a postponement. That was also a charge given to the Commission by the President when he pronounced the postponement,” Ogwa said.
Also, he disclosed that the Personal Digital Assistants as well as other materials including stationeries to be used for the census have all been procured, and those for Cross River State are currently in the custody of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Furthermore, he appealed for continuous sensitization of the public on the need for them to support the census as the data currently in use is stale since the last census conducted was 17 years ago in 2006 with the country not meeting the United Nations standard of conducting Censuses once every 10 years.
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