Classwork Series and Exercises { Civic Education – JSS3}:National Population Census

JSS 3 Civic Education First Term

Topic: National Population Census

Content- Meaning of Population

              Meaning of Census

              How Population Census is Conducted.

Population can be defined as the total or aggregate number of people living in a particular place at a particular point in time.  Population is a great determinant to the development of a place.

Census is the official counting of people occupying a particular place at a given time. It is the process of counting the people living in a particular place at particular point in time.

The figure that is derived after the counting i.e. census is the population.

How Population Census is Conducted

In order to achieve an accurate and successful census, the following activities must be put into place.

• ADVANCE PLANNING: The body in charge of population are called National Population Commission (NPC) in Nigeria must plan ahead for the exercise. Some of the planning involves:

1. The population commission must have to take a lengthy public review in order to determine the questions that the questionnaire will contain, some of the questions will have to do with citizen’s name, age, sex, educational background, occupation, marital status, place of birth e.t.c.
2. After determining the content of the questionnaire, then the population commission will have to recruit staffs i.e

• Enumerators that will assist in carrying out the census exercise, these staffs have to undergo training long before the census will take place. During this training the would-be enumerators will conduct mock counting so that their mistakes and misunderstanding can be corrected.

1. The other aspect of planning is the public enlightenment through advert on radio, television, posters and all other medias, this is important to create awareness to the public if not, they might not cooperate with the enumerators when the time comes.
2. The mapping of the places i.e. the population commission demarcates the areas and mapped them with respective addresses.

• ENUMERATION EXERCISE: This is the period when the census exercise is carried out. And it is done in the following ways:

1. Information is collected with the aid of the questionnaire that has been designed by the population commission.
2. The enumerators goes to a demarcated area and interview members of the household, usually the family head supplies answers to the questionnaires

• The exercise goes on simultaneously in all the enumeration demarcated areas at the same date and time, the figure are collated together in the area before they are forwarded to the state headquarters. It is the state headquarters that forward statistics of census to the national population commission which will then further process census data.
• PROCESSING OF ENUMERATED DATA:

1. Here the national population commission collates all the data ward by ward, area by area, village by village, town by town, city by city and state by state for further processing.
2. The questionnaire is fed into the computer using the optical character recognition software to analyze the shaded portion of the questionnaire and to translate them into electronic data and later into statistics.

• The census officers handling the processing machine will check the questionnaires and make corrections where necessary and get the final results.
• PUBLICATION OF CENSUS RESULTS: After a careful processing, the census results are published into books and electronics software such as CD-ROMS, tapes and storage devices. The results are then submitted to the council of state, which ratifies it and orders that it should be reproduced massively for public use.

Test and Exercise

1. The counting of people occupying a particular place at a particular time is referred to (a) population (b) census (c) national (d) planning. ans (b)
2. The body in charge of population census in Nigeria is referred to as (a)National commission for counting (b) Nigeria Association of Enumerators(NAE) (c) National Population Census (NPC) (d)Nigeria Population Counters (NPC). ans (c)
3. The following are the procedures of population census except (a) Advance planning (b) Enumeration exercise (c) Publication of results (d) Enumerators identification. ans (d)
4. Those in charge of the counting are known as (a) Enumerators (b) Counters (c)Observers (d)helpers. ans (a)
5. The total number of people occupying a particular place at a particular time is census (b) enumeration (b) population (c) census (d) National. ans (b)