Nigeria’s population to hit 170 million this year - NPC

NIGERIA population will hit 170 million mark this year, the National Population Commission (NPC) has said.
The commission made the disclosure in Abuja, on Thursday, at a press conference on the commencement of fieldwork for the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) in Nigeria.
NPC chairman, Festus Odimegwu, addressing the media, said Nigeria population grew at 3.2 per cent per annum, stressing that by the end of the year, the country population would have moved from the 160 million in 2006 to 170 million in 2013.
Odimegwu, represented at the event by the chairman, NPC Technical Management Team and Vital Registration, Dr Festus Uzor, said the effective management of Nigeria population for sustainable development required collection, processing and dissemination of demographic data, not only through periodic census exercise but also through regular surveys and registration of births, deaths and migration.
He said it was in this light that the NPC, in conjunction with other development partners like the the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Department for International Development (DFID) decided to pool resources amounting to N800 million to finance the NDHS project, which he described as a nationally representative survey designed to provide information on the demographic and health status of the population.
The NDHS, he said, would provide detailed information on the levels and trends of fertility, family planning, maternal and child health in the country.
Stressing that only men and women aged betweem 15 and 49 years would be interviewed in the selected households, the NPC chairman said the field work for NDHS 2013 would take place for four months in the South-West  (Lagos); South-East (Imo); South-South (Akwa Ibom); North-Central (Nasarawa); North-East (Gombe) and North-West (Jigawa).