The National Population Commission (NPC) has reiterated its readiness for the 2023 population census, saying all is set to make the exercise a successful one.

Oyo State Director of the NPC, Mr. Bello Abdulkareem, stated this while speaking with The Guardian in Ibadan, the state capital. Bello said everything needed to make the 2023 census meet the world best standard had been done.

He said: “Before you conduct any census to meet the world best practice, you have a lot of methodologies to adopt. We have adopted that. They are in stages. First is demarcation, which we have done. We have done about 771 local councils. The outstanding ones have not been done because of security issues.

‘’We have gone to test the methodology we want to adopt. It was successful.

‘We did not stand akimbo. We have done trial census, which was concluded about three weeks ago. So far so good, we are ready to go. What remains now is the logistics arrangement towards it. We need storage facilities in all the local councils.”

The NPC director, who also solicited the support of the state governments and the cooperation of the residents for the exercise, further said: “We may use state facilities, which are secondary schools. We want to appeal to the state government to assist us.

“We need the co-operation of Oyo State residents. We are the one going to them now. This time, it is not going to be an analogue but a digital system.”