President Muhammadu Buhari says the 2023 census data is needed to tackle the security challenges in the country as it would give an overview of the population.
He said this at the national stakeholders’ summit on the 2023 Population and Housing Census held at the State House, Abuja.
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He said the nation required a new data set to drive not only the implementation of the recently launched revised National Policy on Population for Sustainable Development and other government policies but also several poverty reduction and youth empowerment programmes.
He said the deployment of digital technology in the 2023 National Population and Housing Census would ensure effectiveness and more accuracy in the figures, while noting that Nigeria could rank third largest in the world by 2050, after China and India.
He also said a “reliable, credible, acceptable and successful census’’ would help government in planning purpose for development, especially in bolstering the social security programme that targets more vulnerable Nigerians.
“With a projected population of 216,783,381, Nigeria is the sixth most populous country in the world and the most populous country on the African continent. “Due to the rapidly growing nature of the population and large proportion of the youthful population, Nigeria is also projected to be the third most populous country in the World by the year 2050 after India and China,’’ he said.
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