The National Population Commission, NPC, said it has laid solid foundation for conduct of population and housing census in the country.
The Federal Government had in a statement by the Minister of Information and Culture Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on Saturday, postponed the exercise, which was earlier scheduled between May 3 and 7, to a date to be determined by the incoming administration.
But Director, Public Affairs of the NPC Dr Isiaka Yahaya, at a press conference on Sunday, said the process was only rescheduled and not postponed.
Yahaya who was joined by Census Manager Inuwa Jalingo, denied the insinuation that the postponement was because the commission was not prepared for the exercise.
According to him, “We have done everything that needs to be done and we are ready to move.
“If not for the rescheduling of the gubernatorial elections, the census would have held because we felt after the initial fate, the post-elections healing would set in which would have allowed the smooth conduct of the census.”
He argued that census preparation is a process not an end, stating that the commission had built strong foundation to be built upon for future enumerations.
The director noted that the commission had conducted first and second pre-test exercises, as well as a trial census, adding that the NPC was on track to bequeath Nigeria its first digital census.
“Technically, we are ready as we have the enumeration area information of all the 774 local governments in the state.
“We have used various methods to collect the data on all the houses on the country including places where there is insecurity, and we are ready to go into those places to conduct the census,” he explained.
Jalingo, the census manager, disclosed that the NPC has data on Nigeria’s geo-spatial information which other government agencies are already making use of, to carry out their own activities.
He stated that the commission has over 400,000 tablets to be used for the census exercise, which, he said, have been distributed to Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) branches across the country ready to be deployed on census days.
The census manager argued that despite the postponement, the systems already acquired, will neither become obsolete nor unusable, adding that what the commission needs is to continue to test run them.
He stated that the commission would embark of periodic training of facilitators already engaged for the exercise.
“Our recruitment is data based. All we need to do is to update the data base; some persons may relocate from their area, some of them may die and some may even no longer be interested. We only need to replace them when the time comes.
“As I said earlier, only 30 per cent of people who applied have been recruited,” Jalingo added.
Dr. Yahaya however disclosed that three million people applied for census ad-hoc work but 855,600 were selected.
