By Ayodele Abere
The Honourable Federal Commissioner, National Population Commission, Ekiti State, Hon. Ayodeji Ajayi, has described the decision of the Federal Government to postpone the conduct of the 2023 Census from the scheduled date as a welcome development.
The Commissioner stated this during the breakfast meeting for media Executives/stakeholders on the postponement of the 2023 Population and Housing Census held in Ado-Ekiti, the State capital.
Ayodeji who noted that the postponement would afford the present administration of President Bola Tinubu the opportunity to have inputs into the census process explained that the immediate past administration of Buhari approved the postponement by virtue of the power conferred on him by section 23 of NPC Act, 1989, having commended the Commission for the appreciable progress recorded.
The Honourable Commissioner said, the objective of the meeting was to update the media and other stakeholders in attendance on the status of preparation for the 2023 population and Housing Census as well as the next steps forward in the light of the postponement of the exercise following the promise to be open and engage critical stakeholders always.
According to Ajayi, “the recruitment of Ad-hoc workers had been completed before the postponement through a rigorous online process in which almost one million functionaries have been screened and found worthy of the assignment. The database of all the recruited personnel including their contact details are available for the next census.
“The Commission had completed training of certain categories of personnel before the announcement of the postponement. The training include facilitators at national, zonal and state levels. Data Quality Managers, Training Centre Managers, Monitoring and Evaluation Officers, Quality Assurance Officers amongst others”. The next categories of personnel to be trained are the supervisors and enumerators, the Commissioner added.
Hon. Ajayi further explained that the Commissioner had acquired Personnel Digital Assistants for the 2023 Population and Housing Census. He said Large consignment of the devices have been delivered to the 36 States Offices including the FCT and that they had been configured for the exercise. Adding that adequate arrangement has been made for the storage and security of the equipment to prevent damages and theft.
Earlier, in his welcome address, the State Director of National Population Commission in the State, Mr. Adebola Richard Oladipo, said some people might be anxious to hear Why the Census wasn’t conducted in spite all the publicity being made in both electronic and print media.
Oladipo stated that the importance of the Press cannot be overemphasized in informing the people at the grassroot on the activities of the Commission in preparation to conduct a reliable, accurate and acceptable Digital and Green Census.
In his own remark, the Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Ekiti State Council, Comrade Rotimi Ojomoyela, made an appeal to the Commission to give more room for accreditation of the media so that every community and farmstead in the state would be adequately covered during the exercise.Just as he also urged the Commission to always engage journalists in the state for adequate and efficient projection of its activities.