According to the National Population Commission (NPC), they have spent N200 billion on census preparations over eight years.
Isiaka Yahaya, the Director of Public Affairs at the NPC, clarified that implying the recent expenditure of the money would be incorrect, as the commission has been planning for the census since 2014.
He said this on Friday in Abuja at a news conference.
Nigeria’s census was initially scheduled in 2016 based on United Nations criteria. However, it has faced multiple postponements since its last conduct in 2006.
According to him, “Yes, it is true that N200bn has been spent on preparations for the 2023 Census so far. However, this fund was not expended in the last few weeks, months or years but rather since 2014 when preparations for the 2023 Census actually began.
Indeed, part of the N200 billion was expended before the coming of the present commission, which was inaugurated twice between 2018 and 2020 and even before the inception of the Buhari Administration”.
Yahaya claimed that they spent significant money on several preliminary procedures to ensure the exercise produced reliable and respectable results. He added that they divided the country into enumeration regions for convenient clustering, which provided information on the number of homes in the nation.
cc: Daily Trust Ng
