By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Preparation for the conduct of population and housing census has gulped a whopping N200 billion ($429.6m) in the last eight years, the National Population Commission (NPC) has clarified.
This is in response to the speculations that the said amount was expended in the now postponed 2023 exercise.
The commission’s Director of Public Affairs Isiaka Yahaya at a press briefing in Abuja on Friday said the insinuation that the sum was spent in the last few years was erroneous, noting that the commission has been preparing for the census since 2014.
The West African country held its last population and housing census in 2006 under the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Another exercise slated for 2016 in line with United Nations’ guidelines was delayed till 2023, an exercise immediate past government of Muhammadu Buhari could not complete after training of ad-hoc staff.
“Yes, it is true that N200bn has been spent on preparations for the 2023 Census so far. However, this fund was not expended in the last few weeks, months or years but rather since 2014 when preparations for the 2023 Census actually began.
“Indeed, part of the N200 billion was expended before the coming of the present commission, which was inaugurated twice between 2018 and 2020 and even before the inception of the Buhari Administration,” he said.
Yahaya said the huge sum was spent on different preparatory processes to ensure the exercise comes out with credible and acceptable data.
The agency had assured it would deploy geo-spatial technology to make the exercise credible.
According to the commission, key among the things that gulped the amount was the demarcation of the country into enumeration areas for easy clustering and which has provided the country with data on the number of houses in the country.
