THE National Population Commission (NPC) says Nigeria’s population remains its greatest asset in national development and must be harnessed to make life worth living for the people.
NPC’s Federal Commissioner for Katsina State, Engr. Bala Banye, made the declaration on Thursday in Katsina at a two-day state level workshop on compendium of localities for the 2023 population and housing census.
He said the compendium of localities would be presented to President Muhammad Buhari before the 2023 exercise.
“With the huge resources spent on the Enumeration Area Demarcation (EAD), we are happy that the NPC has acquired a lot of data sets that will be useful for national development.
“I commend the Cartography Department for its efforts to deliver more data for the locality level from the EAD exercise.
“The present Commission under its current leadership is devoted to collaboration and partnership with relevant agencies to advance national development,’’ he said.
Banye implored all participants at the workshop to work with the NPC to achieve excellent results that will add more value to socio-economic development of the country.
He said the objective of the workshop was to compile all the localities demarcated during the EAD on a local government area basis showing the coverage and location on interactive maps.
“This compilation will be presented to the local government area stakeholders in the state. The compendium of locality in census parlance is a tool for census data dissemination as well as for National planning and development.
“The 2023 population and housing census results will be released up to the lowest level of the census entities which could be as small as a camp,’’ Banye said.
He assured Nigerians that the Commission was irrevocably committed to positively rewriting the history of censuses in Nigeria.
He said the NPC would deliver accurate, reliable and acceptable census figures that would be purposefully relevant in the drive toward sustainable national development.
