The National trial census which is set to commence on 13th July, 2022, was flagged off at the commission’s state office in Lagos, on Thursday. The Honourable Federal Commissioner of the National Population Commission, Lagos State, Barr. (Mrs) Abimbola Saliu- Hundeyin brought to the attention of the public, especially to gentlemen of the press, a new device refered to as PDA-( Personal Digital Assitant) which will help to facilitate an easy exercise in the April 2023 enumeration programme.
She pointed that the essence of the trial census is to ensure that an awareness is made so that the citizens, respondents, and residents of the state will be familiar with the activity before next year, as no permanent record is taken now.
The trial census is a process in which all census operations, and all equipment which will be used are tested in a detailed and comprehensive manner. This exercise is called Enumeration Area Demarcation (E.A.D) a process of carving the entire community in to small sets across the country, so that each set can be easily worked with during census. Moreover, the training exercise has been equipping 104 field personnel, consisting of facilitators, supervisors and enumerators drawn mainly from communities within the selected areas.
It is noted that a training workshop had been on and the commission is set to conduct this trial census in 9 local government areas across Lagos State. The Local Governments are selected based on special considerations. Water ways and other remote areas are considered as case studies for this exercise.
Consequently, functionaries took an oath of secrecy to wrap up the event to ensure the confidentiality of data. The Pendulum Media gathered through the commissioner’s speech that the PDA known as Personal Digital Assistant has been in use for some time now and also for the functionaries to get familiar with the challenges that could arise because of the new technology introduced and then knowing how to tackle it.
This oath of secrecy was taken by all the trial census functionaries including the Federal Commissioner of the NPC, Lagos State, Barr. (Mrs) Abimbola Saliu- Hundeyin, the State Coordinator for Lagos State, Mrs. Rita Aigbokhan, the facilitators, and enumerators.
“The conduct of the census is consistent with a constitutional mandate given to the commission in section 24a of the 1999 constitution as amended; that is, ‘to undertake regular enumeration of population of Nigeria through the conduct of censuses and demography surveys.’ The trial census is another, of a means of accessing the methodology of excesses and gigantic exercise popularly known as the census of the censuses and this is also the mother of all data and that is why we say the national population commission is the mother of Nigeria. Without our data, Government cannot succeed in their exercise.” The commissioner declared.
Across the federation, individual states are getting ready for this exercise called Trial census- a dress rehearsal of the April 2023 census.
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