The Adamawa office of the National Population Commission (NPC) says at least 10,000 ad hoc staff have so far indicated interest in participating in the conduct of the 2023 census.

Clifford Zira, the federal commissioner in charge of the agency, made this known in an interview on Monday in Yola.

According to him, the state is currently ranked among the top five nationwide regarding the number of persons who applied through the commission’s recruitment portal.

Eight categories of ad hoc staff (facilitators, field coordinators, training centre administrators, monitoring and evaluation officers and data quality managers) are required for the exercise.

“We also need the services of quality assurance officers, supervisors and enumerators for the population and housing census,” Mr Zira said.

The NPC commissioner assured that most of the ad hoc staff would be recruited from their communities for easy identification and conduct of the exercise.

He noted that the commission had established an e-recruitment team at the state level and a Local Government Area Recruitment and Review Team (LRRT).

“The idea is to ensure that prospective applicants in hard-to-reach areas are easily engaged for the assignment,” added Mr Zira.

The NPC senior official also assured that the nature and quality of the recruitment process would depend on the data collected and, ultimately, the success of the exercise, stressing that the recruitment must be fair and on merit.

Nigerians with minimum academic qualifications of the Nigeria Certificate of Education (NCE), National Diploma (ND), Higher National Diploma (HND) and university degrees are eligible to apply. 

(NAN)