President Tinubu Receives NPC Chairman, Mr Nasir Isa Kwarra, In Abuja

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Thursday received the chairman of National Population Commission (NPC), Mr Nasir Isa Kwarra and his delegation at the State House.

President Tinubu expressed concern over the delay in conducting the Census exercise since the last exercise done in 2006.

He urged the NPC to view this delay as an opportunity to cash in on the advantages of the current electronic and digital age.

NPC Chairman Kwarra, highlighted funding as one of the challenges faced by the Commission, saying they were waiting on the President to support NPC and give the go-ahead for the conduct of the census.

He said the commission had demarcated the entire country, stating that only one or two places were left and that this would be done soon.

Kwarra said the commission had also trained 60,000 instructors that would further train enumerators and supervisors.

In a paper titled "Implementation Status of the 2023 Population and Housing Census," the NPC requested the release of the allocated N31 billion capital allocation, in the 2023 budget, for preparatory activities.

The commission put the total cost of the Census, after a methodology review, at N546.72 billion.

Kwarra also requested the President's approval for an additional N225.2 billion to cover training and fieldwork allowances, retraining of trainers, and the conduct of a second-class Trial Census.

President Tinubu was also requested to approve and convene a stakeholders meeting with the organized private sector and foreign partners to galvanise funds for the Census.

Kwarra informed the President that Nigeria has a database that can be useful in national planning, infrastructure development, and revenue generation.

''NPC having completed Mapping in March 2022, tested the market with the geospatial data by making it available to researchers at a ‘test price’ where it generated over N50 million through REMITA.

''To this end, with a full integrated spatial and statistical data, government geospatial policy and coordination, NPC can generate up to 14 billion dollars and further save a lot of resources for the nation through automation of economic planning by 2028,'' he said.