By Ikenna Osuoha
The National Population Commission (NPC) on Thursday presented the Enumeration Area Demarcation (EAD) report in preparation for the 2023 Population and Housing Census.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Enumeration Area Demarcation (EAD), otherwise called census mapping, is the division of a country into manageable units of Enumeration Area for census exercise.
Alhaji Nasir Kwarra, Executive Chairman, NPC, said the EAD would provide censuses and surveys with an accurate geographic frame to ensure distinctiveness of units of enumeration.
Kwarra also said that it would ascertain the units of enumeration during census and ensure such exercises were not overlapping.
The Executive Chairman who referred to the EAD as Census Mapping, said census mapping in Nigeria dated back to the 1973 census when attempt was made to sketch target homesteads.
“In 1991, the commission demarcated the country into Enumeration Areas which were fair drawn using topographic maps as base maps.
“The 2006 census made attempt to leverage on the new technology-the Geographic Information System (GIS) to demarcate the country using direct measurement and geographic positioning system,” he said.
Kwarra said that the EAD was aimed at developing a sustainable geographic frame for censuses and surveys in Nigeria.
According to him, this consideration is given to the needs of other sister agencies like INEC, NIPOST, NBS etc.
“Therefore, the EAD created a GEO-Database that took into consideration all the administrative boundary of the country.
“Enumeration Area (EA) delineation rules were set to make sure that EA do not cut across Ward/Rural Areas boundary, Localities and Local Government areas.”
Mr Chiso Dattijo, Chairman Cartography Committee, said that EAD was aimed at delivering an error free census operation.
Dattijo who reiterated the imperatives of EAD to census operation, said that census could not be conducted without a cartography
(NAN)
