JSS3 Civic Education Lesson Note on National Population Census

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TOPIC: NATIONAL POPULATION CENSUS

CONTENT: 

1. Meaning of Population Census.
2. Importance of Accurate National Population Census

SUB TOPIC 1: MEANING OF NATIONAL POPULATION CENSUS

Meaning of National Population Census -Taking statistical record of people living in a particular area or a country is very important. This is vital for the development planning of any given society.

Population census is the periodic and simultaneous house to house head count of the people living in a particular area or country at a particular period of time by the officials of the national population commission.

Population census is the procedure of systematically collecting, acquiring, recording and keeping information about the members of a given population. It is a regular and official statistical record keeping of people, houses in a particular area or country.

Population census is the head count of people in a place at a particular time, within a given period. Census is expected to be conducted regularly at every ten years interval.

The census data is commonly used for the following:

• Research purpose
• Population control
• Population management and planning

The first population census in NIGERIA was conducted in 1962/63; census was again conducted in 1973 and also in 1991.

The last population census conducted in NIGERIA was in 2006 which estimated Nigeria population figure to be ONE HUNDRED and FORTY MILLION (140.000 000) people, though there was an argument that Nigeria population census figure was wrongly estimated based on the following.

1. Political factors- in some place’s population figure was overestimated due to political influence to attract more government favor, chiefs and influential person from such area, have to influence the figure.
2. In some places, there were ethnic clashes most especially in place where it was so difficult to distinguish boundaries between neighbouring towns and communities.

iii. In some other places, the census figure was not accurate due to religious factors, e.g where women are kept in purdah in the Muslim North and accessibility to enumerators were not allowed. Whatever the household head declared was taken and this could be exaggerated.  In some other areas, it was the case of census malpractice, where a single individual presented themselves to be enumerated in multiple times. Figures were thus inflated in some places and in some other places people were under counted due to difficult terrain. E.g. the Niger Delta Swamps.

About 700,000 census enumerators were engaged during the last census exercise.

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