Chairman of National Population Commission (NPC), Hon. Nasir Isa Kwara says all effort is on with the proposed population censors in providing Nigerians and international communities the accurate population data against the current estimated 223million.
Hon. Kwara when he paid a courtesy call on the Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation Minister, Dr. Betta Edu in Abuja. Kwara while responding to Correspondents after the meeting held with the Minister underscored the importance of data that will help in delivering the Renewed Hope Agenda of the present administration.
The NPC chairman who promised to avail the Ministry with data from the forthcoming population and housing census, disclosed that the Commission has identified 65 million houses during the trial census exercise conducted across the country.
The NPC boss also said the commission has identified special population who are not living in normal steady homes including Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), fishermen, herders, those living under the bridges, among others. Adding that it has concluded all necessary procurement for the forthcoming population and housing census,
He disclosed that the Commission has demarcated the 774 Local Government Areas across the country, and has maps of residential, offices, water bodies, among others.
According to him, "What we have is just an estimate. And we've done a lot of projections, right from the last census to the current population that we believe we are estimated 223 million in Nigeria, it's an estimate is a projection.
"But to get the actual, we need to conduct census, we're able to provide in Nigeria, Nigerian public, Nigerian government, the global community with the actual population of Nigeria, its characteristics distribution and so on and so forth.
"We need Nigerians to support us as we go through the preparatory processes for the conduct of the census. Like she mentioned, we are also warehouse a lot of geospatial data that we can use because it is obtained through the use of GIS, GPS and satellite images. So, it's very correct.
"With the proper coordinates of every building, every facility in this country even the water bodies that we have, the distribution of population, the household average size, and so on and so forth. There are things that once we conclude the census, we can use. But the geospatial data is already available, we can use it before the conduct of the next census," the NPC Chairman assured.
Responding to question bothering on the reports over alleged hacking of the NPC server, Hon. Kwara who dismissed the report, argued that the report was unfounded.
He said: "we have all the measures in place. That hacking story was just made up. It wasn't true. There wasn't any hacking at all. Our data is well secured. Although, we're still building fortifying the security around our data.
"With the approval government, we want to build a Cybersecurity Center that will not just wait until you are attacked, but to hunt for any eventualities, so open data will be well protected."
In her remarks, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Betta Edu who challenged the NPC management on the need to come up with accurate population data that will help in planning and implementation of the Ministry's mandate.
Dr. Edu said: " Like we know they are the mother of the data we have in Nigeria, so they house the census data and other critical data important to the delivery of our mandate, and of course which is the renewed hope Agenda by president Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
"They are strong partners in the implementation of our mandate. From them we'll be getting the total number of Nigerians which will help us to plan as we carry out our interventions.
"They will also be giving us specific data on the population of different demographics of the population and persons who are below the poverty line and the dimension of the poverty, so that we can address them in our key interventions.
"What is most important is that they are going to be working with us at the grassroot especially as it concerns implementation, monitoring and evaluation. They have staff on ground in various Wards, Local Governments and communities, and these staff are going to be collaborating with us.
"We'll be setting up a technical team between the Ministry and the commission that would really flesh out various aspects of this collaboration.
"Beyond this, we'll be working with their team on the geospatial digital mapping and statistics across the nation. And this will help very detailed implementation of the Ministry of Poverty Alleviation, and of course, humanitarian issues in the entire country. So for us, they are a very, very viable partner, and we would be supporting them all the way through," she noted.
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