Ahead of the next population census in the country, the National Population Commission (NPC) would begin demarcation of areas in Bauchi state for easy tracing by the enumerators, chairman of the commission, Nasir Isa Kwarra, said Monday.
While briefing journalists at the commission’s headquarters in Bauchi on the conduct of pre-test for the next population and housing census, he said census is the constitutional mandate of the commission.
He added that the commission has so far demarcated 630 local governments areas out of the 774 in the nation.
Represented by the federal commissioner in charge of Bauchi, Ibrahim Muhammed Darazo, the chairman stated that the pre-test exercise is a critical part of the census planning process which provides the opportunity to test all aspects of the census programme and instruments in advance of the main censual activities in order to ensure its success.
“In order to effectively enumerate all Nigerians within a reasonable period, it becomes imperative to divide the whole land mass of the country into small units that can easily be covered by a team of enumerators during census enumeration.
“This in essence, constitutes the enumeration area demarcation which is one of the core preparatory activities for the census exercise. Pre-test is usually conducted before the actual census and during the middle of the enumeration there is always an area demarcation exercise,” he said.
