By Asmau Ahmad
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) on Friday mobilised technical support to the National Population Commission (NPC) for a successful conduct of the 2023 Population and Housing Census.
Country Representative of UNFPA, Ms Ulla Mueller, said this while handing over 16 sophisticated laptops valued at N2 m each to the NPC in Abuja.
Mueller who restated the commitment of the UN to a credible and reliable census, said that census was key national development.
She said that the Fund would continue to mobilise technical and financial support for a census that would be in line with provisions of International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).
Mueller, however, emphasized the importance of a Post-Enumeration Survey (PES), critical to aggregation of accurate data.
Thanking UNFPA, Alhaji Nasir Kwarra, Executive Chairman, National Population Commission (NPC), said that PES was an accepted Census self-evaluation tool.
“The Post Enumeration Survey (PES) is a brief survey undertaken shortly after the conduct of a Census to determine the accuracy of the Census by establishing how many persons were missed or counted more than once.
“The PES is thus defined as a complete re‐enumeration of a representative sample of a Census population
“Followed by matching each individual enumerated in the PES with information from the Census enumeration (UN, 2008),” he said.
Kwarra expressed the importance of PES to give credibility to the Census results and engender confidence of Census data users.
He said that the commission had placed a high premium on the PES in preparation for the census.
According to him, this is evident in the commission’s inauguration of an 18-man team in April 2022 to plan and implement the 2023 PES.
Kwarra said the presentation of the laptops not only affirmed the importance of the PES to the census process, but reaffirmed the UNFPA’s commitment to the success of the 2023 PES and the 2023 Population and Housing Census.
