The Chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC), Eze Odimegwu on Wednesday announced the approval of the sum of N600 billion by the Federal Government to establish a centralized demographic database for the country. Addressing participants from the Defence
Intelligence School in Abuja, Mr Odimegwu said
that the funds will help the agency provide
relevant data to Nigerians for a period of five
years in the areas of health, national security
and agriculture. “We will use cutting-edge technology in the
world to do everything we do; the best in
class competencies, we are looking for the
brightest and the best and we have to fully
resource our strategy,” he said. “The president actually approved close to
N600 billion for NPC for five years to review all
the things we want to do. And if you think this
N600 billion is big, if all the scattered places
they are doing demographic now, they spend
trillions of trillions of naira every year and yet the job is not done. So when we consolidate it
and do it in five years, it is still cheap for the
country. The president said so and he was
happy we came to give him that quality of
presentation. “So in our systems, we want to be open in all
what we do. We want to hire the best people
to do it and we want our vision, budget and
strategy to drive our budgeting,” the NPC
Chairman said. On his part, the course coordinator from the
school, Wing Commander Idris Hassan stressed
the need for improving the knowledge base of
its participants through the provision of
adequate data for a proper understanding
of how to ensure national security.
www.channelstv.com/home/2012/09/19/jonathan-approves-n600-billion-for-demographic-database-npc-chairman/

Good move.

Is this quango (NPC) not a surplus to requirements, duplicating work carried out by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)?

Fatdon: The Chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC), Eze Odimegwu on Wednesday announced the approval of the sum of N600 billion by the Federal Government to establish a centralized demographic database for the country. Addressing participants from the Defence
Intelligence School in Abuja, Mr Odimegwu said
that the funds will help the agency provide
relevant data to Nigerians for a period of five
years in the areas of health, national security
and agriculture. “We will use cutting-edge technology in the
world to do everything we do; the best in
class competencies, we are looking for the
brightest and the best and we have to fully
resource our strategy,” he said. “The president actually approved close to
N600 billion for NPC for five years to review all
the things we want to do. And if you think this
N600 billion is big, if all the scattered places
they are doing demographic now, they spend
trillions of trillions of naira every year and yet the job is not done. So when we consolidate it
and do it in five years, it is still cheap for the
country. The president said so and he was
happy we came to give him that quality of
presentation. “So in our systems, we want to be open in all
what we do. We want to hire the best people
to do it and we want our vision, budget and
strategy to drive our budgeting,” the NPC
Chairman said. On his part, the course coordinator from the
school, Wing Commander Idris Hassan stressed
the need for improving the knowledge base of
its participants through the provision of
adequate data for a proper understanding
of how to ensure national security.
www.channelstv.com/home/2012/09/19/jonathan-approves-n600-billion-for-demographic-database-npc-chairman/

Willingly or otherwise, leaders will have to do the right things eventually. It would have been wise if this was done in the first place to assist economic planning, credit issuance, migration patterns etc. If this had been done as a sincere obligation of Government many years ago, then the fight against terrorism may be easier today.

GEJ did not cause this problem but he must realise how the situation he now faces is worsened by past leadership failing to be sincere or do what is best in the interest of Nigeria and Nigerians. Blame falls squarely on OBJ for our current debacle regarding the usage of important demographic information as tools of deceit and cheating. The latest demographic and population censor we have to rely on tady happened , very expensively, under OBJ in 2006. It was an excercise in cynicism and fraud. OBJ ratified the last authoritaive census we had. When they were pegging Lagos at 9 million and disregarding at least 6 million folks, what did they think would be the result in future other than the serious challenges that will arise from how millions of Nigerians are not even known to any database because some decided that undercounting, which encourages looting, is best?

Amidst of lack of infrastructure,yet Gej is appro ving such a huge amt for demographicnonsense.
Of wat usefulness is dis?
Wen dey are no jobs ,power and infrastructure.
Ohhhhhhhhh !!! Dese leaders are clueless

If there is something Nigeria needs apart from Electricity, it is biometric or demographic database. The benefits are too many to mention.

We cant conclude for now, till when the project is completed

With all respect to my president and
the president of Nigeria, remember
your election promise d to the teeming
unemployed youths of our country. I'm
amazed tonight to the report credited
to you, that you have approved the sum of 600 billion naira for
demographic database, when the
creation of jobs are just mirage and
not real. Sir, is their any future for us:
from the past records, such huge
funds as always turn to be, people who are to implement the project,
enrich their bank account with this
funds. Mr president, we voted you in
because we want a change and let
every funds approved by your
administration be subject to accountability and as well the agency
or contractor involved, by so doing we
can dream big and achieved our
common objectives.

So roughly $800 mil/year? So ~$4-5 per person/year? Seems high, no? How much do other countries spend to collect this information, per person/year?

Why do you need up to this HUGE amount of money to do this?...just wondering

My fellow Nigerians,it is d basis for planning and allocating resources.Moreso security challenges can be overcome.Think of dis, why is it so easy for citizens to get access to loans and incentives abroad?Because there is a database which identifies u so they re not afraid you will run after giving u this priviledge but try that in Nigeria now it won't work because no system in place to identify who is who.Database demography is d bedrock of any planning and dev processes in a country.It can be used to determine the amount of Power, Food, Security policing ie (ratio of police per citizenry), employment, social welfare, Housing needs, Water etc dat the citizens need. GEJ is going back to the basic foundation our past govt have neglected that stalled Nigerias growth. I don't envy his job because with all this, he is still d most critisized by mostly ppl who do out of ignorance(bandwagons) and ppl who belong to different political affilihation forgeting dat if Nigeria improves its for our collective gud irrespective of ethnicity,partisanship etc.

My fear is I hope d money will be well utilised but I trust NOI to be doing financial check,dat is why. Most politician will prefer dat woman dead but na lie God is with her.She recently reduce d budget of FCT removing all d channels of financial loopholes.

At the end of the day, the money will move but the job will not be done

ekt_bear: So roughly $800 mil/year? So ~$4-5 per person/year? Seems high, no? How much do other countries spend to collect this information, per person/year?

This stuff is typically expensive:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Census_Bureau#Organizational_structure

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/15/census-bureau-running-budget-heavy-counting-gets-way/

The US is spending $1.5 billion/year, for a country 2X in population.

So similar cost per capita. But labor is much cheaper in Nigeria than in the US....you'd expect to get each person measured at a lower cost (assuming that labor is the dominant factor in cost, which your links seem to suggest).

So why the huge discrepancy?

I see our hallowed intellectuals are salivating as usual... have you cared to ask if there is a sustainability framework in place, what is NPC's strategy, it is rendering a public service as a public agency.. otherwise it will go the way of the past 3 census and INEC registrations where a colossal size of digital data gathering was performed and yet neither agency has been able to produce 1MB of usable data because they need another colossal budget and exercise to convert the data they have digitally collected back to usable form.

We continue to praise initiatives and fail to ask questions on why it failed years later. let us ask the painful questions now N600 billion may well be put into Health and Education than Demography (often politicized in the end)

Keep it up Mr President! Some people will still complain even though its glaring he is trying his best concerning the development of the country at large.

ekt_bear: The US is spending $1.5 billion/year, for a country 2X in population.

So similar cost per capita. But labor is much cheaper in Nigeria than in the US....you'd expect to get each person measured at a lower cost (assuming that labor is the dominant factor in cost, which your links seem to suggest).

So why the huge discrepancy?

they will be importing Labour and Technology as usual, $$$$

what the difference between this and all the ID contracts they dole out annually?

Misplaced priorities.

God help us!!!

The guy is so amazed with the challenges facing the country that he actually wants it quantified and verified properly. . .

My major grouse is that this project if it sees the light of day will be handled by foreigners (indians and europeans), from the top all the way to the bottom. In order words, massive capital flight.

esere826: My major grouse is that this project if it sees the light of day will be handled by foreigners (indians and europeans), from the top all the way to the bottom. In order words, massive capital flight.

if it is handled by Nigerians like the last National ID card project would any thing still come out of it. look at the last census that was handled by Nigerians and they kind of result it produced in some state like Kano and lagos, despite that Kano is now 2 states (Jigawa and Kano) Kano is still more populated than Lagos.

^-- truth

All these stupid waste of money. Some people in Nigeria have vested interest to make sure Nigerians are not counted. They begin one controversy or another just to thwart the census. Why? They benefit from citing bogus population figures to corner more federal revenue from other people's resources.We need to have true federalism before wasting more money on census.Then,we would have removed the incentive for some people to count their goats and chicken as human beings

cjrane: All these stupid waste of money. Some people in Nigeria have vested interest to make sure Nigerians are not counted. They begin one controversy or another just to thwart the census. Why? They benefit from citing bogus population figures to corner more federal revenue from other people's resources.We need to have true federalism before wasting more money on census.Then,we would have removed the incentive for some people to count their goats and chicken as human beings

The point of this action is to get real population figures and to prevent the counting of livestock as humans. I thought that would be obvious.

kettykin:

if it is handled by Nigerians like the last National ID card project would any thing still come out of it. look at the last census that was handled by Nigerians and they kind of result it produced in some state like Kano and lagos, despite that Kano is now 2 states (Jigawa and Kano) Kano is still more populated than Lagos.

Great point you're making. But, I think we need to think of creative ways of keeping as much of the N600 Billion Naira within our system

My comcern is for now is wen are they recruiting gradutes with ds huge sum of money?
I learnt dey will b recruiting frm a source bt not very sure of d time

i work with one of the best spainish company on biometric database,that works with digital finger prints and the european digital biometric id cards,with only 10billion naira we can in 6month have a database digital biometric finger prints for all nigerians.with and id card like what we have in european countries.example is below

why 600billion
only GOD ALMIGTHY will save this country from animals ruling us

There is too much money in this land.... All those saying our economy will crash know nofin cos Nigeria has a way of rubbishing every known economic model. In a country where '70% lives below poverty line' and 600 billion for biometic? Are there no longer disciplined soliders again in Nigeria to atleast call this govt to order??

THATS ABOUT 4K PER HEAD.SEE HAMMERING