By Chris Ochayi

ABUJA—AS the preparations for next year’s head count gears up, the Federal Government, yesterday, announced the release of over N775 million for the conduct of Enumeration Area Demarcation, EAD, across the country.

EAD is a process of deploying high calibre technology to divide the whole land mass of the country into small units that can be easily covered by a team of enumerators during census enumeration.

The exercise, which is expected to commence on  February 20  and end on  March 10, 2017, also constitutes the foundation on which the entire census architecture stands.

Addressing newsmen in Abuja, Chairman of the National Population Commission, NPC, Chief Eze Duruiheoma, said the Commission was deploying sophisticated technology to carry out the exercise.

Besides, the NPC boss, however, promised to include religion and ethnicity in the 2018 census data against the conduct of the 2006 housing and population census.

He said “It is our expectation that what will be required for future censuses will be updating. Products from the EAD exercise can also be used by NIPOST to generate zip codes for the country.

According to him, “It is in this regard that the Commission is deploying sophisticated technology in carrying out the EAD. The methodology for the census is designed to achieve full Geographic Information system, GIS, compliance.

“High resolution satellite imagery will be used to ensure that no area is left undemarcated or no place is duplicated. The methodology being adopted will not allow for the creation of imaginary EAs and any attempt to include non-existent households and buildings in the EAs will be detected through satellite imagery.”

Duruiheoma noted that, this third phase of the EAD will take place in 37 Local Government Areas in 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.