TheCable

The National Population Commission (NPC) says it has opened an online portal for ad-hoc staff recruitment for the 2023 census exercise.

Eyitayo Oyetunji, federal commissioner of NPC in Oyo, said this on Tuesday at a news briefing in Ibadan, the state capital.

The portal was launched by Nasir Kwarra, the NPC chairman, at the commission’s headquarters on October 31.

The recruitment process will end on December 28, 2022.

Oyetunju said the use of ad-hoc manpower is necessary to ensure accurate and reliable conduct of the population census.

“With the launch of the portal, the recruitment process of functionaries for the 2023 population and housing census has formally commenced,” he said.

“Several other publicity activities will follow to ensure that no credible candidate is left behind in the state and to forestall misinformation and exploitation of prospective candidates.

“As you may recall, the commission had earlier launched the e-recruitment portal for the conduct of the 2022 trial census. I am happy to inform you all that it was a huge success and that lessons have been learnt and integrated to put up a much-improved e-recruitment portal for the successful conduct of the next population and housing census in April 2023.

“For the census exercise, applications are to be made through the portal for facilitators, training centre administrators, monitoring and evaluations officers, data quality managers, data quality assistants, supervisors and enumerators.

“To ensure a fair, efficient and transparent recruitment process, the federal commissioners will, in addition to the existing team at the state level, constitute a Local Government Area Recruitment Team (LRRT), comprising three persons.

“The quality of the recruitment process will reflect on the quality of the data to be collected and ultimately, the success of the census.”

He said the commission will ensure that quality staff are employed for the exercise, adding that the workers will be selected from communities where they are residing.

“Consequently, every community will have the opportunity of contributing to the census workforce, thereby ensuring that people are adequately counted,” he added.

“Special provision has been made to accommodate the physically-challenged and other special populations in the recruitment process.”

He gave the link for the portal as: http://2023censusadhocrecruitment.nationalpopulation.gov.ng

The commission has provided hotlines – 07000236787 and 07000CENSUS – in the situation room at the headquarters for further information and enquiries.

Meanwhile, the federal government had earlier announced that it will hold a national census by April 2023 after the general election.