The National Population Commission will spend N719 billion to conclude digital census in 2023.
Already, it has spent N187 billion, domiciled in the 2022 budget approved by the National Assembly for the trial census.
Appearing before the Senate Committee on National Population and Identity Management, the Chairman of the Commission, Alhaji Nasir Isa Kwarra, told the lawmakers that the Commission will need N532.7 billion to conduct the national census scheduled to hold in April 2023.
The N532.7 billion, according to the NPC boss, is purely proposal for conduct of the 2023 census, which he said would be digitally done.
Kwarra said: “Aside the N10 billion budgetary proposal for 2023 fiscal year earmarked for NPC, the sum of N532.795,604,726 billion is estimated for conduct of 2023 Census.
“NPC is ready to re-write the history of census in Nigeria by making the 2023 one not only accurate, credible, reliable, but acceptable to all Nigerians.”
He added that the proposed sum for the conduct of the 2023 census covers post-enumeration survey and that the exercise will be a great departure from the past in terms of keying into the issue of climate change.
In the 2023 budgetary proposal for the agency, Kwarra said an envelope of N1.05 billion was earmarked for capital expenditure, N655 million for overhead and N8.6 billion for personnel.
For the 2022 fiscal year, the NPC boss said a total of N206.85 billion was appropriated for the commission, out which N107.7 billion was earmarked for capital expenditure, N615 million for overhead and N7.8 billion for personnel cost.
However, the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Sahabi Ya’u (APC-Zamfara North), told the NPC boss to furnish the committee with details of projects executed with the 2022 appropriation line by line and those proposed for the 2023 fiscal year.
Requests by the NPC boss to decorate the Chairman and members of the committee as 2023 Census Ambassadors at the beginning of the session was however turned down.