The Federal Government of Nigeria, through the National Population Commission (NPC), has disclosed its plan to recruit one million Nigerian enumerators for the conduct of the National Census in 2023. NPC Adhoc Staff Recruitment Portal For 2023 Census.
The NPC management assured Nigerians that a reliable technological innovation had been put in place by the agency for the smooth conduct of the exercise to prevent interested politicians or elites from manipulating the process.
Deji Ajayi, the Commissioner representing Ekiti State at the NPC stated this in Ado Ekiti, on Monday, during a press conference on the trial census to be conducted in Ekiti preparatory to next year’s main census exercise.
Meanwhile, the former Ekiti State Head of Service added that 9 towns across the 9 selected local governments out of the 16 councils in the state had been delineated into Enumerated Areas (EAs) to ease the trial census.
The retired Permanent Secretary disclosed that the areas to be covered in the trial census in Ekiti include: Ado, Emure, Iro, Ijero, Ikole, Iworoko, Ise, Ikun and Omuo Ekiti.
“This is the first time we will be doing a paperless census. Everything will be digital to check corruption and bring about accurate data that can help national development.
“Census is a massive operation that will engage one million personnel and managing such a huge workforce manually will raise huge logistical and documentation challenges.
“It is in recognition of this fact that the NPC resolved that recruitment for the 2023 census will be done electronically. This trial census will provide an opportunity to test the feasibility of e-recruitment.”
Emphasizing the significance of census to nation-building, Ajayi noted that the population statistics would be used by private organisations to plan for the recruitment of young Nigerians by knowing the number of the active population.
“The government will also use such statistics to plan for our youth, students and the health needs of Nigerians. They will also know the number of gerontocrats who should be catered for,” he said.
While assuring Nigerians that the exercise will be difficult to manipulate, the NPC boss said: “Technology is open to manipulation, but NPC has gone a step higher by having an updated technology innovation that can prevent multiple registrations.
“The biometric technology will capture your face and fingerprints and goes to the server and any similar information supplied will be noticed and expunged from the data immediately.
“This time, no person who is not seen will register as a Nigerian. We have put everything in place to ensure that this exercise will neither be hijacked nor politicised.
“The commission has intensified preparatory activities deploying technological innovation on a massive scale to conduct a truly scientific census that will not only be accurate and reliable but also transparent to all Nigerians.”
“We have also brought in some eggheads from our universities and retired experts from the civil service to train our workers for better efficiency,” he said.
