CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
- INTRODUCTION
In a technological society like ours, human productivity is made more efficient through the development of electronic gadgets. Now, with the advent of such modernization in the world of election, one way to globalize the process of research is to realize that technology is advancing at an incredibly fast pace. Computers are not confined to being used for entertainment but its role in census is also vast. Census refers to an official count carried out by a national government of its country’s population. A population census determines the size of a country’s population and the characteristics of its people, such as their age, sex, ethnic background, marital status, and income. National governments also conduct other types of censuses, particularly of economic activity. An economic census collects information on the number and characteristics of farms, factories, mines, or businesses.
In Nigeria, census is conducted by government in order to ascertain the population of its citizens, their location, occupation, etc. This information when obtained is stored to help government, for its future policies and plans. Planning, managing, and implementing a population census is an extremely complex endeavor. Hence, a well-planned and efficiently managed population census is critical to producing timely and accurate information.
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
In Nigeria, the National population commission of Nigeria is in charge of conducting census. The National Population Commission (NPC) of Nigeria was established by the federal government in 1988. It has the statutory powers to collect, analyse and disseminate population and demographic data in the country. It is also mandated to undertake demographic sample surveys, compile, collate and publish migration and civil registration statistics as well as monitor the country’s Population Policy. The Commission was reconstituted in 2001 with a Chairman and 37 members representing each state of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory. The Commission has a network of offices covering all the administrative tiers of the country: Federal, State and Local Government Areas (LGAs).
Over the years, the National Population Commission (NPC) of Nigeria has been facing a lot of challenges in carrying out there constitutional responsibility. These challenges are mainly due to the manual method of data collection and inefficient statistical analysis of the population data. In this project a data mining approach will be used to make an essence of the data collected during census.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Census makes a huge variety of general statistical information on society available to both researchers and the general public. Population and economic census information is of great value in planning public services (education, funds allocation, public transportation) as well as in private businesses (locating new factories, shopping malls, or banks, as well as marketing particular products).
But in Nigeria, this above mention uses of census is not the case. This as a result of the ineffective methods adopted in collection and analyzing census data in order to obtain valuable information. Even when these data are collected and stored in a database, obtaining useful information from this large repository of data is another problem. Problems associated with the Nigerian Censuses entails the following:
- Data storage and retrieval are partially manual and it is prone to human error
- Data are store in a flat file database, hence lacks relation.
- Data storage, management and retrieval is hectic and retrieval at times almost impossible
- Manipulation of result as a result of the enumerators’ inability to reach the remote areas.
- The corruptive influence of the rich politicians on the enumerators and other delegated officials to inflate the result of a particular area.
To curb these challenges, there is need to make use of data mining techniques in discovering information from the large repository of census database. The information obtained can then be utilized by government agencies in budget and planning for the economic policy.
1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The aim of this project is to design a census data mining and warehousing system that will be used by National Population Commission of Nigeria to conduct and analyze census data.
The objectives are to design a system that will do the following:-
- Collect, store and retrieve data faster than the existing system
- Maintain accuracy, security and integrity of data collected
- Undertake periodic enumeration of population through sample survey, Censuses or otherwise.
- Establish and maintain machinery for continuous and universal registration of births and deaths throughout the federation.
- Publish and provide information data on population for the purpose of facilitating economic and development planning.
1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The research work is designed to cover all aspect of head count, birth registration and death registration. This is to enable government maintain accurate population figure for the country and also for the states.
1.5 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
This census system will be limited to database storage, querying, sorting and retrieval. Data entry will be done using the keyboard and mouse. Also information was hard fetched as some were termed vital and thus undisclosed.
1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This research is of great significance to the National population commission as it extends the knowledge base that currently exists in that field. The concept of manual recording of census data will give way to a faster and efficient method which is the computerized form. Also the concept of querying of tha database will give way to data mining. The study will further help:
- Have accurate figure of the country’s population
- Enable government to plan very well (and forecast) in terms of budgeting.
- Helps government to know where to establishing more social amenities
- Answer the question of the world about the number of Nigerians
- Provide accurate result that shows the most populated state and other statistics.
