The National Population Commission, NPC has commenced the screening of functionaries to be deployed for the 2023 head count.
The country had fixed 29th March to 2nd April 2023, for the national census.
The total number of functionaries to be trained and deployed for the 2023 Census is 786,741.
The Director, Public Affairs Isiaka Yahaya, had revealed in a statement that training for functionaries will commence on Monday. The training, which is being organized in stages starting with the training of Census Specialized Workforce (CSW) and facilitators who will in turn train enumerators, supervisors, field coordinators, data quality assistants and data quality managers.
According to the statement, the training includes self-learning study, online training with monitored simulated hands-on and in-person classroom and hands-on training.
“The functionaries are to be trained on census forms, census applications, data capturing process, interpersonal communication, and basic troubleshooting of Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI). Other topics of focus during the training include dispute resolution and basic use of excel.
The Functionaries include 623,797 enumerators, 125,944 supervisors, 24,001 Data Quality Assistants, 12,000 Field Coordinators, 1,000 Data Quality Managers, 1639 Training Centre Administrators and 59,000 LGA level facilitators.
NewsSpecng gathered that the training of facilitators was done online and ended 20th January 2023.
NewsSpecng however went round some of the centres slated for the training of functionaries that is, supervisors, enumerators.
NewsSpecng visited Karu local Government Area of Nasarawa state to observe the process.
The training which was scheduled to take off on 23rd Monday had not commenced . What was ongoing was the screening of documents for the exercise.
This is to ascertain the identity and suitability of applicants.
On Tuesday, 24th January, the same was observed. This time, there was a mammoth crowd that turned out for the screening.
The chaotic situation, caused by the huge turnout has slowed down the process. Applicants are already getting agitated with the uncoordinated arrangement.
Speaking to one of the applicants, Mr Dozie obi, who narrated his experience said, “ordinarily we expected the commission to send us a message to come for training. Rather we got an information that we should all come here (secretariat) for screening of our documents”
“We have been here since 7am and all we did was write down our names. We are waiting for them to come”
Another applicant, Mr Matthew said he had been here since 7am “that this crowd you see are all here for the same thing. We don’t know how long this process will take but we are waiting for the officials to begin the process “
At 10:30, the process had begun and the crowd were getting impatient, pregnant women seen sitting under the tree waiting for their names to be called.
As at the time of filing this report, there were no fewer than 456 names on the list.
The essence of the training, NPC has stated is “To ensure that the data collected are of high quality, the Commission has recruited and trained Data Quality Managers and Data Quality Assistants on the deployment of maps, data validation and monitoring of the census dashboard.
