President Buhari Swears-In Mohammed Dattijo Usman as Commissioner of the National Population Commission in State House on 9th June 2021. (Credit: Femi Adesina)
Maria-Therese Nnalong
The National Population Commission, NPC has asked for the support of citizens as it conducts a pretest exercise in preparation for the next population census in the country.
Mrs. Saidu Salimu, the Plateau State Coordinator for the pretest exercise who intimated citizens about the importance of the exercise, stressed the efforts would only be successful if citizens give their support.
Speaking in Jos at a press briefing, the Coordinator said the exercise has taken off smoothly in the designated enumeration areas, following advocacy visits by the State officials before their arrival, explaining that the pretest which was ongoing nationwide from June 6 to 13, is to test the reliability of all instruments, in preparation for the main census exercise, to ensure the quality of the data that would be generated.
According to her “We want to solicit for support, in as much as we have support already from the state government , local government and even communities, I want to solicit for more support. This is to ensure that at the end of it , we have quality data for developmental purposes in Nigeria. The essence of pretest is to test all the instruments we are going to use. We are testing the readiness of the people, how many days are we supposed to use for the census and things like that.
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“It is expected at the end of this field work, whatever that is gotten would be looked into and analysed, in preparation for the main census. This is the first pretest , hopefully there will be another, test then the trials, then the main census just to make sure that we give Nigerians accurate data.”
Earlier, the State Director of NPC, Mr. Pam Deme said the pretest would be conducted in two local government areas of Jos South and Mikang and six enumeration areas would be covered in the local government areas by 12 trained enumerators who would conduct the exercise as supervised by the field and state coordinators.
He added Enumeration Demarcation Areas, EDAs, which takes the longest time in pre-censal activities must be completed before the census saying “it can take two to three years or more to prepare”, but assured that government was deploying necessary resources to ensure its completion in 2021.
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Deme disclosed that EDAs have been completed in more than 600 out of the 774 local government areas in Nigeria and expressed confidence that the exercise will be successful since the Commission has involved critical stakeholders in the six selected enumeration areas to achieve the feat .
The pretest exercise is aimed at testing census methodology, the questionnaire and data collection methods. Other procedures to be tested are the manuals for field staff, instruction manuals, data editing and coding, data processing and tabulation in preparation for the actual census.
