The Resident Representative of United Nations Population Funds (UNFPA) in Nigeria, Ms Ulla Mueller, has commended President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to conduct a digital census in 2023. Mueller said when a country knows its population data, it can plan even ahead.
She spoke during the launch of the Census Dashboard and Mobile Device Management System that will serve as a monitoring instrument to enhance the quality of data that would be collected during the census across the country.
UNFPA, Mueller said, will continue to support the country and the National Population Commission (NPC) to ensure success. Mueller said the dashboard would provide quality assurance, adding that the Commission was poised to conduct the first digitized census that would be credible and acceptable.
Chairman of NPC, Nasir Isa Kwarra, during the unveiling ceremony, said the dashboard is another major step that underscores the Commission’s commitment to providing reliable and credible demographic data for national planning.
“As part of our collective resolve in the Commission to conduct a fully digitised census in Nigeria, the Commission is leaving no stone unturned to achieve this set objective. It is in furtherance of this that we are witnessing the official launch of the Census Dashboard and Mobile Device Management System as a monitoring instrument to enhance the quality of data being collected during the census across the country real-time.
“In considering the effort put into setting up the monitoring system and idea behind it, we are convinced that the dashboard and Mobile Device Management System will serve the Commission and lead us to an expected end which, producing a very viable, verifiable, acceptable and reliable 2023 census come may 2023,” he said.
The chairman explained that the dashboard displays real-time performance of census data that National Population Commission, National Bureau of Statistics and external users can use to proactively identify and resolve potential performance problems before they occur during household and population enumeration process.
He added that the performance data can also be archived for management reporting and trend analysis.
“It is an information management tool for monitoring, analyzing and producing a visual display of the selected key performance indicators (KPIs), metrics and important data required to track the enumeration process for the 2023 census.
“The developed census dashboard utilizes CSPro data collected from enumeration areas/hamlets. It pulls data stored in CSPro (.csdb) format and stores it into MySQL database for easy processing and visualisation,” he said.
Speaking further, the chairman said, “The dashboard shows total household by region (Maps and Bar chat) Population distribution by region and sex. Population distribution represented in pie chart.
”It shows the population pyramid. It shows the daily total population count collected from the enumeration area. It shows enumeration coverage (in percent) by region. It allows tracking enumeration progress per enumerator. It shows detailed enumeration progress from top (region) to bottom (EA/Hamlet) level.”
Also speaking, Statistician General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Mr. Semiu Adeniran, lauded the preparedness of the Commission towards census, describing it as unprecedented in the history of Nigeria.
Adeniran said the setting up of the dashboard and mobile device management system would enable the Commission to monitor from its headquarters the activities in the fieldwork. He assured the support and synergy of the National Bureau of Statistics to ensure the success of the census exercise in 2023.