By Alabidun Shuaib AbdulRahman
The Federal Commissioner representing Cross River state on the board of the National Population Commission, NPC, Navy Capt. Charles Ogwa, has expressed the view that the advantages of conducting the postponed population and housing census far exceed its expenses.
The Commissioner made this statement during a breakfast meeting with media executives in Calabar on Friday.
Ogwa emphasised that census data serves crucial purposes in economic planning, national security, and all aspects of national life.
He added that it would aid the government in economic planning, believing the data collected from the digital census has the potential to generate substantial funds.
“International organizations and corporate entities often rely on census data to determine where to direct their assistance,” he claimed.
“The national security agencies also use census data for security purposes because every EA is geo-referenced with coordinates. Census data could be used for massive research so the benefits are enormous and outweigh the cost of conducting it.”
Ogwa expressed confidence that the administration led by President Bola Tinubu would ensure the successful implementation of the census within the shortest possible timeframe.
He further revealed that the necessary workforce, including data quality managers, monitors and evaluators, administrators, and managers, has been recruited and trained.
The Federal Commissioner said they are currently on standby as the outstanding training is focused on enumerators and supervisors.
“We have recruited and trained our workforce including data quality managers, monitors and evaluators, administrators and managers. They are on stand-by. The outstanding training is for enumerators and supervisors.
“The immediate past government, in its wisdom, postponed the population and housing census so that it would come up after the elections matter would have been completed. The second reason was that since the in-coming government will be the major user of data generated from the exercise, it would be better for it to have a serious input so as to own up the census.
Alabidun Shuaib AbdulRahman is a Nigerian Journalist