By ABUBAKAR YUSUF

The leadership of National Population Commission (NPC) under Hon. Nasir Isa Kwarra and his Commissioners are not leaving any stone unturned in ensuring the success of the forthcoming 2023 population and housing census.

The 2023 census exercise is coming after the statutory 10 years interval.

Since assuming duty at the Commission two years ago, Kwarra has guarded jealousy, the mandate to conduct a new digital population and housing census that will not only be acceptable to Nigerians, but the global community as well.

Aside repositioning the agency to be able to deliver on its mandate through major reforms which have boosted the morale of staffers to delivering on their statutory obligations, the new Commission has provided a modern and modest avenue to transmit census reports and results of the forthcoming exercise, through synergy, collaboration, sensitization, awareness, talk shops, workshops and symposiums.

With the huge digital experience and resume of its staffers, the Commission set the ball rolling for the first digital population and housing census, away from the previous manually generated and speculative data being peddle for more than half a decade which is no longer feasible for the political, economic and social development of Nigeria.

Having exposed the staff to the modest digital skills, the task of achieving the forthcoming census slated for March 2023 may still be difficult without the input of the media, considering the greater roles the media and other stakeholders are expected to play with a view to achieving an incontrovertible headcount in the country.

Kwarra and his team, in their assiduous preparations, have carried the media along as one the critical stakeholders seen as partners in progress towards achieving a new brand of census that will fasten the development of modern Nigeria.

With an inaccurate population figure, Nigeria as the giant of Africa, had lost its prestigious roles in the comity of nations, as well as its role model template for other developing countries across the African continent.

The current leadership of NPC, apart from maintaining robust media engagements with all medium of communication consisting of the conventional/ traditional and online media, organized a three-day orientation seminar for journalists in the country in Abuja and across the six geopolitical zones to enable them to gain new skills and more knowledge of population news reportage, as the country inches closer to next year's census.

The three-day media training held between 9-13 May , 2022, was declared open by Kwarra, the NPC Chairman, in Abuja where he appealed to journalists to extend their support to the Commission to ensure the success of the 2023 population and housing census.

He underscored the significance of the media as the Fourth Estate of the Realm to the overall development of the country, stating the obvious that their roles cannot be overemphasized.

He lauded their roles that led to the success of the enumeration, pretest census and the trial census exercises, preparatory to the main census for next year.

The Commission did not stop at that, as it also organised a grand luncheon for media executives, few months after the Thursday, 27th October, 2022, capacity building workshop for journalists, was another engagement and opportunity to solicit continuous support of the media world to take Nigeria from the archaic computation and frequent reference to the outdated population figure.

The quest for collaboration with the media by NPC was an indication of a selfless and patriotic stance of the current leadership towards arriving at more accurate and reliable figure of Nigeria's population.

Two years down the line, the new NPC was already conscious of the futility of the current population figure, and the desire to take the country to another level by placing it among the comity of nations, through a well articulated population and housing census figure.

With the multiplier effect on the survival of the country with a huge population, all hands must be on deck to ensure the success of the 2023 exercise, against the naysayers whose insistence on the extension of the headcount was more or less unpatriotic and ill- motivated.

With an enabling environment, cooperation and collaboration, it is high time the media industry demonstrated commitment towards the success of the forthcoming population and housing census in Nigeria.

•Abubakar Yusuf could be reached on yus.abubakar3@gmail.com

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