Kaduna state government has been generating data locally for policy making, but the state will support fully the National Population Commission (NPC) to ensure a sound, accurate and reliable census data is available for use.
Governor Nasir el-Rufai who said this when the Chairman of NPC, Alhaji Nasiru Isa Kwarra, paid a courtesy call to Sir Kashim Ibrahim House Kaduna, reiterated that data was key for not only for population census but also for policy making and planning purposes.
‘’Kaduna state believes the use of data, we don’t like policy making in the dark. And the only way that we can improve the policy making capability is through the good use of data. We have not had a census since 2006, all the numbers that we have are out of date, or from international organisations. Many of which we found, were also guessing.
“Kaduna state Bureau of Statistics has been very active in undertaking all kinds of data collection. For instance, every year we do a general household survey. We also do GDP survey every year, undertake annual schools census, health facilities census. And every six months or so, we carry out opinion polls, to test the pulse of our people on what we are doing right and wrong, so as to effect corrections where necessary,’’ he said.
According to el-Rufai, census will provide a very good foundation that Kaduna state Bureau of Statistics can build upon to do more accurate surveys in the future. He assured the commissioner of the total commitment of the government and people of Kaduna state, to the success of the forthcoming exercise.
The governor said he was pleased that “NPC has up to 340 vital registration centres in Kaduna state but we need more centres because Kaduna is a big state, we have 46,000 km².
“We are ready to work with the commission, so as to open more vital registration centres across the state, so that people don’t have to travel long distances to register births, deaths and other important data. The projected population of Kaduna state is within the region of 10 million but we are really looking forward to this census to reconfirm our figures.’’
The governor assured the commission of continued advocacy, through the local government machinery as well as traditional institutions, adding that they will also use their political foot soldiers to mobilise people to come out and ensure that they are counted.
The NPC Chairman said the delegation came to solicit el-Rufai’s support on sensitization and publicity for all Kaduna citizens to have full information before the exercise begins mid 2022.
He said the commission is ready to conduct a realistic and acceptable census for proper planning and policy formulation, adding that NPC had already done house-to-house enumeration and delineation in 772 out of the 774 local governments.
