TheCable

The National Population Commission (NPC) says Nigeria’s population remains its greatest asset for national development.

Bala Banye, NPC federal commissioner for Katsina, spoke on Thursday at a two-day workshop on compendium of localities for the 2023 population and housing census.

He said the compendium would be presented to President Muhammadu 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,” Banye said.

“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.”

Banye implored all participants at the workshop to work with the NPC to achieve results that will add value to the 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 LGA 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,” he added.

“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.”

He assured Nigerians that the commission is 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 relevant in the drive toward sustainable national development.

The commissioner pointed out that preparations for the 2023 exercise were on course and the NPC is confident of discharging the function effectively.