Presidential Research & Communications Unit

President Umaru Musa Yar’adua has declared that his administration will give the required attention to the establishment of a permanent and orderly process for the collation of vital data and statistics required for effective national planning.

He made the declaration at the State House, Abuja July 17 after receiving a briefing on the conduct of the 2006 national population census from the Chairman, National Population Commission (NPC), Chief Samu’ila Makama.

While commending the NPC for successfully conducting the 2006 National Population Census, President Yar’adua observed, “We need to pay more attention to putting in place permanent structures to ensure the continuous and daily registration of such vital information as births, deaths and marriages which will go a long way in solving all our problems involving lack of statistical data for planning purposes.”

Mr. President promised his administration’s full support for the commission’s efforts to discharge its other responsibilities.

During the commission’s briefing, Makama explained that the majority of national and international stakeholders had accepted that the provisional census figure of 140,003,542 was the true representation of Nigeria’s population.

Urging the Federal Government to establish Census Tribunals, he appealed to all stakeholders to use the census data for sustainable development.

Nigeria had conducted a population and housing census in March 2006.

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