The National Population Commission (NPC) has embarked on pre-test exercise in Zamfara for the next population and housing census.
The NPC Federal Commissioner in charge of Zamfara, Alhaji Muhammad Muttaka-Rini, disclosed this at a news conference in Gusau on Thursday.
“This first pre-test exercise is for the next population and housing census exercise in the country.
Muttaka-Rini noted that the conduct of census was the constitutional mandate of the commission.
“We have intensified the Enumeration Area Demarcation (EAD) activity with 630 local government areas (LGAs) across the country out of which 13 LGAs were successfully demarcated in Zamfara,” he said.
Muttaka-Rini listed the objectives of the pre-test as quality and usefulness of the EA maps already created, demographic and geographic changes that occurred in the EAs created in 2016-2018 and their implications for census enumeration.
He added that other objectives of the exercise include uploading of EA maps for census enumeration, relationship between EAD estimated population and pre-test population, among others.
“The pre-test exercise is usually conducted before the completion of the EAD exercise.
“The exercise is a critical part of the census planning process which provides the opportunity to test all aspect of the census programme and instruments in advance to ensure smooth operations and success.
“This is aimed at testing the census methodology, the questionnaires, data collection methods, manuals for field staff, instruction manuals, data editing, coding, data processing and tabulation in preparation for the actual census,” he added.
He said some selected EAs in some LGAs of the federation demarcated between 2016 to 2018 would be utilised for the exercise.
According to him, the census instruments will be deployed to test-run their suitability and readiness for the actual census.
