2023 Census Will be Better, Accurate, More Reliable, Says  Commissioner

Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo 

In an effort to have a generally acceptable digital population and housing census in 2023, the National Population Commission (NPC), Osun State chapter, yesterday took its awareness campaign on the census to the streets of Osogbo, the state capital.

The campaign to create awareness for the next year’s census by the state NPC officials, including the Federal Commissioner Senator Mudashiru Hussein, marched several kilometres.

The campaign started by 7 a.m. from the state NPC office through Lameco, state Governor’s House, Oke-Fia, Station road, Oja-Oba, Sabo, Ayetoro, Olonkoro, Old garage, and terminated at the Nelson Mandela Freedom Park.

While speaking, the  Federal Commissioner, Senator Hussein disclosed that the next year population and housing census would be far better, and accurate, and more reliable than the previous ones.

Hussein said Nigeria would be the first country in Africa to conduct census with digital instrument.

He noted that the federal government would be able to plan for the well-being of the citizens after the successful the next year census.

The commissioner charged the people of the state to work together with the commission if truly they want meaningful development in Nigeria.

According to him, “The campaign is a kind of awareness, it is a sensitisation programme. We have been doing this since almost two years. We did what we call Area Demarcation, survey, map up, and now it’s the main census scheduled for April next year tentatively.

“We are instructed by the Ministry that we should sensitise the public to know that kind of census we are going too conduct.

“President Muhammadu Buhari decided on his own time to do the census so that the incoming government will have something to do-we have something in our plan. We have

financial planning which lacks data, but now by God’s grace, when we finish everything, we will know the incomplete houses, the completed houses, the public schools, the public hospitals, the private ones, and the household in each local government and state.”

However, the Osun State Director of the NPC, Mr. Owoeye Martins, said the awareness programme is to express the readiness of the commission to the people in the state.

He stressed that the next  census would be paperless and purely digital, adding that the commission will engage the National Orientation Agency to go back to the grassroots to inform the people about the population census.