From Molly Kilete, Abuja
The Chairman of the National Population Commission(NPC), Mr Nasir Isa-Kwarra, has solicited the support of the Nigerian Army to help provide security for its personnel in crisis prone areas in the country to enable it conduct the pre-census exercise and the main census in 2023.
The Chairman said this has become necessary considering the security situations is some parts of the country where it’s official cannot operate without adequate security on ground.
Isa-Kwarra, who made the appeal
when he visited the Chief Of Army Staff(COAS), Lieutenant General Faruk Yahaya, at the Army Headquarters in Abuja, also called on the COAS to direct commanders of the various formations to grant access to census officials to count army structures during census exercises.
He told the army Chief that the delineation exercise had been completed in 774 local government areas remaining Birnin Gwari in Kaduna State and Abadem in Borno owe to insecurity.
The NPC, boss while noting that the NPC required the collaboration of the Nigerian army to carry out its assignment considering the security challenges bedeviling the nation, said the Nigerian army had continued to play important role in providing security for its officers on the field bearing in mind the volatile nature of some parts of the country.
He said “We are here to solicit your continued support as we continue to carry out other sensors exercises that will lead to the national census in April 2023.
“We want to also engage with you to make sure that we deliver to Nigerians an accurate and generally acceptable census come 2023.
“Our job entails a lot of fieldwork and because of the current security challenge, we cannot go anywhere without the support of your men,” he said.
Welcoming the delegation to his office, Gen. Yahaya, who assured the commission of the Nigerian army support to enable it carry out its assignments, said that population census remained an important ingredient in national development, saying the data generated from the census would also be useful in the efforts to ensure national security.