Mrs Saidu Salimu, Plateau Coordinator for the Pre-Test Exercise of the next Population and Housing Census in Nigeria, has urged residents of the state to support the exercise to ensure its success.
Salimu made the call at a news briefing by the National Population Commission (NPC) to intimate Plateau residents with the importance of the exercise on Tuesday at the commission’s office in Jos.
“We want to solicit for support, in as much as we have support already from the state government, local government and even communities, I want to solicit for more support.
“This is to ensure that at the end of it, we have quality data for development purposes in Nigeria,” she said.
She said the exercise had taken off smoothly in the enumeration areas, following advocacy visits by the state officials before the arrival of officials from the headquarters in Abuja.
Salimu explained that the pre-test which was ongoing nationwide from June 6 to June 13, was to test the reliability of all instruments in preparation for the main census exercise to ensure quality data.
“The essence of pre-test is to test all the instruments we are going to use. We are testing the readiness of the people, how many days we are supposed to use for the census and things like that
“It is expected that at the end of this field work, whatever that is gotten will be looked into and analysed in preparation for the main census,” she said.
She also said that the already demarcation areas would also be looked into to either correct or harmonise where necessary, what was previously done.
“This is the first pretest, hopefully there will be another test, then the trials, then the main census just to make sure that we give Nigerians accurate data,” she said.
Speaking earlier, the State Director of NPC in Plateau, Mr Pam Deme, said the pretest would be conducted in two local government areas of Jos South and Mikang.
Deme said six enumeration areas would be covered in the local government areas by 12 trained enumerators, who would conduct the exercise as supervised by the field and state coordinators.
He explained that there were pre-census activities that must be put in place before the conduct of the main census, such as the Enumeration Demarcation Areas (EDAs).
He said EDAs which takes the longest time in pre-census activities must be completed before the census, saying “it can take two to three years or more to prepare”.
The state director assured that government was deploying necessary resources to ensure its completion in 2021.
He said EDAs had been completed in more than 600 out of the 774 local government areas in Nigeria, and that Plateau had only two uncompleted out of its 17 local government areas.
He expressed confidence in the success of the exercise, saying the commission had involved critical stakeholders in the six selected enumeration areas to achieve the feat.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Pre-test is aimed at testing census methodology, the questionnaire and data collection methods.
Other procedures to be tested are the manuals for field staff , instruction manuals, data editing and coding, data processing and tabulation in preparation for the actual census. (NAN)
