Nigeria’s Population Census Postponed To May

The National Population Commission (NPC) disclosed that the 2023 Housing and Population Census will be postponed to May due to upcoming gubernatorial and state house of assembly elections.

The gubernatorial and state house of assembly elections were supposed to happen on March 11 but they got postponed to March 18, which affected the Census. The census is happening this year after 17 years.

The upcoming census was first scheduled from March 29 to April 2 in all 774 local government areas of Nigeria. As per United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Nigerian population has been estimated to be around 216 million.

According to multiple reports, the census will take place from May 3 to 7. However, the dates have not been officially announced yet.

Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed shared the information on Wednesday after a weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council confirmed that the rescheduling took place due to upcoming elections.

Mohammed also said that N2.8 billion fund was approved for NPC to ensure that the software-based census gets conducted smoothly.

"There was a memo presented by the National Population Commission, seeking for some software to allow them to conduct the census in May this year. I believe because of the rescheduling of the elections, they cannot commence the census as scheduled," Mohammed said, Arise TV reported. "They sought Council's approval for a contract to procure software for the census at the sum of N2.8 billion."

The 2023 Nigerian Census will be marked as the first digital census. "The 2023 Census will be Nigeria's first Digital Census and will change how the Census is being conducted in Nigeria before now," the official NPC's website issued a statement. "This approach started with the demarcation of enumeration areas covering the entire territorial space of Nigeria using a mobile handheld device and geographic information systems (GIS) and satellite imageries to create the digital census maps."

The statement explained that the operations will start from building and household listing as usual but the "digital maps will be fetched online as against carrying paper maps as of old, therefore making the entire process paperless."

They also shared a comparison chart of the previous census done in 2006 and the upcoming census.

Previously, the population was classified into eight categories - Regular household, Institutional household, Homeless household, Homeless persons, Nomadic Household, Transient persons and households, fishing and hunting population and census functionaries.

The upcoming census will be classified into only five categories - Household, Institution (long stay), Institution (short stay), Floating/Transient population and Diplomatic Corps.

NPC has claimed that the 2023 census will be more accurate in terms of collecting data.

This is not the first time when Nigeria is turning towards digitalization. Last month, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) introduced Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the 2023 General Election.