Mentally-challenged and homeless persons will be counted during census – NPC

Mentally-deranged and homeless people will reportedly be captured in the upcoming 2023 housing and population counting.

Prince Diran Iyantan, the NPC Federal Commissioner representing Ondo State disclosed this during a one-day capacity-building workshop for the 2023 population and housing census publicity committee, held in Akure on Wednesday, April 19.

Iyantan also assured Nigerians that the 2023 census would have at least 98 per cent success. The State Director of NPC, Mr Oluyemi Falusi, on the other hand said digitisation of the census was in line with UN recommendations. Falusi said the 2023 exercise would be the first digital census to be conducted by Nigeria, adding that it would facilitate faster processes, reduce error, track progress, ensure efficiency and ensure prompt publication of results, among others.

The NPC Director also said the training, recruiting, deployment, conduct, analysis and publication and other processes of the exercise are fully digitalised. Falusi who further revealed that a 5-tier strategy being deployed for quality assurance, robust monitoring and evaluation system had been set up, concluded by stating that there would be a call centre and a situation room in the state to assess the daily progress of the exercise.