The National Population Commission (NPC) has said that it will count special citizens such as the mentally imbalanced persons and lunatics living in the country as part of efforts to ensure that everybody is counted during the forthcoming head count in March and April 2023.
The NPC Federal Commissioner in charge of Enugu State, Hon. Ejike Ezeh, disclosed this in Enugu when the trained journalists in the state on effective reporting of the forthcoming National Census.
He said the commission had already concluded plans to identify the mad and homeless persons, adding that people doing peculiar jobs would equally be reached in their duty posts.
The commissioner also disclosed that the commission’s officials had been trained on how to identify ages of individuals who may be able to know their own ages.
He said, “We have identified every point where these special people stay. They will be the first to be counted and on the case of the mad people, we will be counting them in the midnight when they would have been more calm. So, we will use village people and those conversant with their environment to get to them”.
He said the training, titled “Capacity-Building Workshop For Journalists On Effective Reporting For 2023 Population and Housing Census”, was envisioned to achieve a credible 2023 census.
According to him, the exercise was aimed at training journalists on those processes and methodologies that would be employed during the 2023 National Population and Housing Census to enable them report accurately.
Ezeh said the forthcoming census scheduled to take place between March and April, 2023 was going to be a digital one.
Ezeh said: “Press being a very vital partner in progress towards the census, we deemed it very important to sit with them and try to understand ourselves.
“As far as information is concerned, the press is the gateway of disseminating it.
“So, the commission organised the capacity building workshop to make them understand some of the methodologies and processes on the issues involved. This will help them to report the census appropriately and help out people understand what we are doing.
“Where there are gaps and issues, the media should let us know that is why, we have 30 of them and other institutional bodies here,” he said.
Source: The Nation
