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From Fred Itua, Abuja
Executive chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC), Hon. Nasir Isa Kwarra, has expressed concerns over growing insecurity ahead of next year’s conduct of the national population census.
He, however, revealed that he’s optimistic that the challenges will be addressed by security agents, who he said were already doing a lot.
“There are security challenges. But we’re working with security agents in addressing them. We can now go to places we couldn’t go before because of insecurity,” he said.
Kwarra spoke in Abuja yesterday during a media conference to on Trial Post Enumeration Survey (PES)
Speaking on the exercise, he said PES is a statistically representative survey that the National Population Commission will use to check the accuracy of the Trial Census conducted in July 2022.
“The PES will allow the commission to determine how many people were missed, included by mistake, or counted in the wrong place.
“The conduct of the Trial PES is an integral part of the preparatory activities for the conduct of a successful census in 2023. The Commission is placing premium importance on this exercise. As you know, a Population census is the official enumeration of all persons in a country at a specific time. This encompasses the collection, compilation, evaluation, analysis, publication and dissemination of demographic, social and economic statistics relating to the population,” he said.
Speaking further, he said: “The PES, therefore, has been designed to redress these possible errors in the census process. The results of the comparison are mainly used to measure coverage and content error in the context of the census.
“This Trial PES exercise is in line with the United Nations Principles and recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses.
“It gives credibility to the census results and engenders confidence and acceptability of the census by data users.
“The objectives of this Trial PES are to measure Coverage error due to either under‐coverage or over‐coverage of persons and in some cases households/housing units in the Trial Census.
“To determine content errors through measuring levels of agreement in responses to questions on selected characteristics, such as sex, age, marital status, relationship to reference person or head of household
“To identify procedural and conceptual limitations in the Census which need improvement in future Censuses and large‐scale surveys and
“To provide a statistical basis for adjustment of Trial Census results based on net coverage rates.”
To achieve the outlined objectives of the PES, he said the Commission has constituted an independent team and saddled it with the responsibility of preparing and conducting the 2023 PES which will take place shortly after the conduct of the 2023 digital Population and Housing Census.
“To this end, the Commission has painstakingly selected and trained PES Enumerators and other PES Functionaries in 6 LGAs of the 6 States where the PES is to take place. The training was rigorous with an intended high-quality output from the personnel and the adoption of the slogan, “Zero Tolerance for Error.”
The Trial PES will be conducted in 127 Enumeration Areas in one (1) LGA in one (1) State in each of the Six (6) geo-political Zones.”
