The National Population Commission (NPC), has begun a 10-day training for 1505 state facilitators for the 2023 census in Plateau.
Declaring the training open on Friday in Jos, Mrs. Cecilia Dapoet, the Federal Commissioner, NPC in Plateau, urged the trainees to be committed to learning.
The commissioner expressed confidence in the caliber of trainees, who are mostly from academia but charged them to be serious-minded as the census was critical to the economic growth of Nigeria.
“The assignment is going to be demanding. I urge you to be serious and committed to serving the country especially as Nigeria has not had a census for a long time,’’ Dapoet said.
The commissioner advised the trainees to be patient with their facilitators and be humble to learn as they need to understand to impact knowledge appropriately to the enumerators and supervisors at the local government level.
In his remarks, the State Director of NPC in Plateau, Mr. Pam Deme, stressed that their capacity to know and understand was very critical, adding that they would be given training manuals to guide them.
He said that 1505 trainees including 502 from the specialized task force, started their training on Jan. 23 on technical support for the census.
Deme explained that the trainees would be trained on how to conduct a digital population and housing census, which involves modules on census procedures, its concepts, methodologies, and field practicals.
Speaking at the occasion the State Coordinator of the training, Prof Daniel Dabi, urged the trainees to be open-minded as the training would be conducted by younger people who are more technology savvy.
“Younger people will teach you because it is a digital census. You will be taught how to use the tablet because it is the instrument for the digital collection,” he said.
Dabi also implored the trainees to seek clarifications on grey areas they do not understand as their understanding determines the quality of the census data.
Responding on behalf of the trainees, Mr. Jikdang Cletus said that they would ensure they get the requisite knowledge, to enable them to train the enumerators and supervisors for a successful census.
