NPC Begins Post-enumeration Survey, Seeks Assistance

National Population Commission (NPC) has begun a trial Post-enumeration Survey (PES), even as it called for assistance and cooperation from Nigerians to enable it conduct the first fully digital census in Nigeria in April 2023.

The executive chairman of the commission, Nasir Isa Kwarra, who flagged off the exercise in Abuja yesterday, reiterated the commitment of the NPC to conduct a credible and reliable census whose result would be planning tool for national development.

Kwarra said PES is a statistically representative survey that the commission would use to check the accuracy of the trial census conducted in July 2022, which would allow the commission to determine how many people were missed, included by mistake, or counted in the wrong place.

He added that trial PES, which would be carried out from 18th to 29th October 2022, would be conducted in 127 Enumeration Areas in one LGA in one state, in each of the six geo-political zones.

The selected six local government areas in each state of the six geo-political zones, include, Toungo LGA in Adamawa (North East), Idemili South LGA in Anambra (South East), Brass LGA in Bayelsa (South South), Daura LGA in Katsina (North West), Karu LGA in Nasarawa (North Central) and Imeko-Afon LGA in Ogun (South West).

The chairman of the commission explained further that the objectives of this Trial PES also include, measuring coverage error due to either under‐coverage or over‐coverage of persons and in some cases households/housing units in the Trial Census.

“To determine content errors through measuring levels of agreement in responses to questions on selected characteristics, such as sex, age, marital status, relationship to reference person or head of household

To identify procedural and conceptual limitations in the Census which need improvement in future Censuses and large‐scale surveys and to provide a statistical basis for adjustment of Trial Census results based on net coverage rates.”

He continued, “The conduct of the Trial PES is an integral part of the preparatory activities for the conduct of a successful census in 2023.

“However, errors are inevitable in a large-scale data collection exercise such as a Census. Errors can arise from many sources in the conduct of the census, especially in field data collection and processing procedures.