The National Population Commission reiterated on Thursday that the census scheduled for 2023 will be verifiable and digital.
Seyi Aderinokun, the Federal Commissioner for Ogun State, emphasized that the Commission is not a political body and that its role is to conduct censuses that will produce data for economic development.
The explanation was made by the commissioner, who was represented by the state director of NPC, Olushola Adeleye, during a one-day training in Ogun State on improving the skills of journalists to effectively report on the population and housing census in 2023.
She insisted that the Commission will conduct a physical count of Nigerians, guaranteeing that no proxy counts would be used.
She claims that the census will be digital since the Commission used cutting-edge technological technologies to code structures and land mass, describing details like location and sceneries, among other things.
The workshop, according to the NPC Federal Commissioner, was designed to teach journalists how to report the census effectively and efficiently. He described Ogun State as a population convergence point.
She added: “We are not a political organisation. We have responsibility to conduct census; it is a research that is meant to generate data for economic planning. We are not ethnic or political related or motivated.
“The census result will be verifiable and it will be digital; we are deploying technological innovation,” Adeleye assured.
Folami Muka, the deputy director of the Census Department, stated in his presentation that numerous censuses conducted in the nation had been plagued by various complaints because people thought they were politically driven.
Muka, while stressing the importance of the Commission having a people-oriented exercise, expressed, “Getting the people involved to participate and own it is paramount to its overall success. However, in Nigeria, the conduct of population censuses over the years, has been fraught with many challenges due to the perception of many people as to what a population census is, or is not.
“The outcome of a population census in terms of size, has always thrown up heated exchanges between various groups within the polity, thereby adversely affecting the growth and development process of the country because the use of such data for planning for national development is always underplayed,” the deputy director remarked.
In the meantime, Mrs. Funmi Wakama, General Manager of Ogun State, Nigeria Television Authority, asked the media to be true partners in order for the outcome to be acceptable.
Wakama insisted that accurate demographic statistics would be helpful for planning and development.
