The benefits of conducting the postponed population and housing census far outweigh its expenses since the government would use census data for economic planning, security and every facet of national life.
The federal commissioner representing Cross River state on the board of the National Population Commission (NPC), Navy Capt. Charles Ogwa, said this Friday during a breakfast meeting with media executives in Calabar.
He said, “Apart from the government using census data for economic planning, data from the digital census could generate substantial funds for the government. International bodies, corporate organisations, for instance, depend on census data to know where to channel assistance.
“The national security agencies also use census data for security purposes because every EA is geo-referenced with coordinates. Census data could be used for massive research so the benefits are enormous and outweigh the cost of conducting it.”
Ogwa believed that the President Bola Tinubu-led administration would ensure the exercise sees the light of day in the shortest possible time.
“We have recruited and trained our workforce including data quality managers, monitors and evaluators, administrators and managers. They are on stand-by. The outstanding training is for enumerators and supervisors.
“The immediate past government, in its wisdom, postponed the population and housing census so that it would come up after the elections matter would have been completed. The second reason was that since the in-coming government will be the major user of data generated from the exercise, it would be better for it to have a serious input so as to own up the census.
