The Federal Commissioner, National Population Commission, NPC, for Kwara State, Alhaji Abdulrazaq Folorunsho Gidado, has charged functionaries engaged for the population and housing census billed for March 29-April 2 this year to work hard and correct the mistakes committed in the previous censuses in the state.

Gidado observed that “the population figure of Kwara State is not what is being posted about” and urged the functionaries to play their patriotic role in giving the state an accurate, reliable and acceptable population census exercise.

“With the deployment of technology in the first-ever digital census project in the country, it will be difficult to input any wrong information in the exercise, unlike the previous censuses where animals were counted,” he said.

The Federal Commissioner said the impending exercise could afford the state the opportunity to capture the accurate population to ensure justice among the comity of states.

He said the state had not moved forward since its creation in 1967 due to the errors committed in the previous head counts.

Speaking on Saturday at the oath-taking and closing ceremony of the 10-day training programme for census functionaries in Ilorin, Gidado commended the ad-hoc personnel for their patience, sacrifice and understanding without any incidence recorded throughout the exercise.

He assured the functionaries of adequate security and logistics as they moved to the local government areas in the state for the next level of pre-census activities.

Gidado described their participation in the exercise as a clarion call to serve Kwara State and Nigeria at large, hence the need for commitment to achieving the desired result.

Responding on behalf of the over 700 functionaries of the project, Professor Abdulrasheed Abiodun Adeoye of the University of Ilorin described the training as broad and generally educative.

He pledged the commitment of the personnel to perform according to the commission's expectations with the in-depth training programme of the functionaries.