Politics, ethnic bias won’t affect census – NPC

The National Population Commission has said the 2023 planned census is not ethnic or politically motivated.

The Ogun State Federal Commissioner of the NPC, Seyi Aderinokun, who was represented by the NPC state director, Olushola Adeleye, said this on Thursday during a one-day capacity building workshop for journalists.

 The workshop was aimed at training journalists in effective and efficient reporting of the 2023 population and housing census.

She stated, “We are not a political organisation. We have a responsibility to conduct census; it is a research that is meant to generate data for economic planning. We are not ethnic or politically related or motivated.”

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Aderinokun said the commission was poised to deliver a credible census, stressing that counting by proxy would not be allowed.

“The census result will be verifiable and it will be digital; we are deploying technological innovations,” she said.

In his presentation, the Deputy Director of the Census Department, Folami Muka, stressed that having a people-oriented census “is paramount to its overall success.”

Muka stated, “In Nigeria, the conduct of population census over the years has been fraught with many challenges due to the perception of many people as to what a population census is or is not.

“The outcome of a population census in terms of size has always thrown up heated exchanges between the various groups within the polity, thereby adversely affecting the growth and development process of the country because the use of such data for planning for national development is always underplayed.”

Meanwhile, the Ogun State General Manager of Nigeria Television Authority, Mrs Funmi Wakama, urged the media to be a veritable partner so that the outcome of the exercise would become credible and acceptable.