The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr Betta Edu, has called on the National Population Commission (NPC) to provide accurate population data that will enable the ministry to plan and implement humanitarian interventions across the country.
Dr Edu made the call on Monday when she received the Chairman of the NPC, Mr Nasir Kwara, and his team in her office in Abuja.
She said that the population data was vital for the delivery of the ministry’s mandate of lifting millions of Nigerians out of poverty and humanitarian crises through the Renewed Hope Agenda of Bola Tinubu.
She noted that the NPC was a critical partner in providing demographic data on various segments of the population, such as those below the poverty line, the internally displaced persons, the fishermen, the herders, and others.
She added that the ministry would collaborate with the NPC to ensure effective and efficient implementation of the poverty alleviation and humanitarian response at the grass-root level.
She said, “We have the chairman and the entire team from the NPC here in the ministry seeking collaboration. You are important to us in terms of data for the delivery of our mandate. And of course with the Renewed Hope Agenda by President Bola Tinubu, they are strong partners in the implementation of our mandate.
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”From them we will be getting the total number of Nigerians which will help us to plan as we carry out our interventions. They will also be giving us specific data on the population of different demographics of the population. As well as persons who are below the poverty line and the dimension of the poverty, so that we can address them in our key interventions.
“What is most important is that they are going to be working with us at the grass-root especially as it concerns implementation, monitoring and evaluation. They have staff on ground in various wards, local government areas and communities and these staff are going to be collaborating with us. We will be setting up a technical team between the ministry and the commission to really flesh out various aspects of this collaboration.
“Beyond this, we’ll be working with their team on the geospatial digital mapping and statistics across the nation and this will help detailed implementation of the Ministry of Poverty Alleviation.
”And of course, humanitarian issues in the entire country, so, for us, they are a viable partner and we would be supporting them all the way through.”
On his part, Mr Kwara assured the minister of his unwavering commitment to support the ministry’s efforts in providing humanitarian interventions to vulnerable Nigerians.
He said that the Federal Government was determined to conduct a credible and reliable population and housing census that would reflect the true population of the country, which he estimated to be about 223 million.
He said that the commission had completed the demarcation of the 774 local government areas across the country and had identified 65 million houses during the trial census exercise.
He also said that the commission had captured the special populations who are not living in normal steady homes, under bridges, in camps, or on water bodies.
He said, “We need Nigerians to support us as we go through the preparatory processes for the conduct of the census. Like the minister mentioned, we have also warehoused a lot of geospatial data that we can use because it is obtained through GIS, GPS and satellite images. So, it’s very correct.
“With the proper coordinates of every building, every facility in this country, even the water bodies that we have, the distribution of population, the household average size, and so on and so forth.
He promised to avail the ministry with the data from the forthcoming census, which he said would be conducted soon.
He commended the minister for her passion and dedication to the welfare of the less privileged and the displaced in the society.
He expressed his confidence that the collaboration between the ministry and the commission would yield positive results for the nation.