The Mysterious Population of Nigeria | The Republic
The Mysterious Population of Nigeria
Since 2006, Nigeria has not conducted a nationwide population census. In the digital age, can we build a functional country without knowing how many people we actually are?
Photo-illustration by Toluwalase Onilede / THE REPUBLIC.
How many people live in your country? For every country in the world, there is an estimate to answer this question. These answers come with caveats because population statistics are notoriously difficult to track. By nature, they are moving targets: in countries, we count people, but people are born every minute. They die every minute. They migrate across borders or within them. These ebbs and flows make it difficult to have an exact count of the people who exist within a place, so a census captures a moment in time. This means that many governments know enough about how many people live in their country. Nigeria, however, does not.
I do not know how many people live in Nigeria. I have no idea whether Nigeria has 180 million, 250 million or 200 million people, with population figures typically reported as estimates that vary across reputable sources and over time. I also suspect that no one else knows enough to know what number is closest to the correct one and I worry about this uncertainty. But how can nobody actually know how many people are in a country?
Nigeria is positioned as the most populous country in Africa, yet it has made no efforts to make a count of its population in 20 years. This is the central paradox. Since 2006, Nigeria has governed itself without knowing the extent to which its cities have expanded, which villages have emptied, how many babies have been born, how its population is distributed by gender, how many communities have been displaced by climate disasters such as floods, how insecurity and insurgency have changed settlement patterns, how many Nigerians have migrated internally or abroad and how many people have migrated into Nigeria. At the centre of these changes, the statistical figure for which many crucial policy decisions rest on is largely an extrapolation from 2006. For the most part, Nigeria’s government operates in statistical darkness.
Economic forecasts, policy discussions and even social commentary often present the figure of Nigeria’s population with remarkable confidence. Numbers like 220 or 250 million are widely accepted to be true. Perhaps these estimates are correct. But there could be fewer people or more. And this uncertainty raises a fundamental question: can you build a modern society without knowing the number of people in it? This dilemma extends beyond Nigeria.
Africa is often discussed as the continent of the future because of its population promise. According to the United Nations, it is expected to account for 25 per cent of the world’s population by 2050. This projection has serious implications for its economic, political and climate future. Africa is supposed to be the labour epicentre of the future; the place where the global economy should be looking to understand what the dynamics of our world might look like in a few decades. This idea is crucial and complicated. The reason is simple: the numbers we accept as fact for most African countries have never been officially confirmed. Multiple countries today, such as Benin and Niger, have not conducted a census in more than ten years. For a continent whose demographic future is discussed with such conviction, it is striking that it measures itself so flippantly.
Nigeria has not conducted a population census since 2006. For Ethiopia, there has been no effort to get an estimate of the population since 2007. That countries as politically and economically significant as Nigeria and Ethiopia (the second-most populous country in Africa and a major hub for migration in the Horn of Africa) have allowed such lapses between censuses is particularly concerning. These are nations whose demographic trajectories and makeup influence regional markets, global migration patterns and development efforts with consequences far beyond their borders. More should be expected from these governments to correctly count how many people live in these countries. In the 1964 novel, Arrow of God, Chinua Achebe popularized the Igbo proverb: ‘A man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body.’ The Nigerian census story deserves the same treatment. To understand how Nigeria arrived at a point where it struggles to count itself, we must understand how the process of counting even became politicized. The Nigerian census was never a neutral exercise motivated simply by curiosity. From colonial period to independence, it has been deeply entangled with the administration of the state and the distribution of political power.
WHY STATES COUNT PEOPLE
To understand Nigeria’s census story, it helps to understand why governments began counting people in the first place. Before governments took to measuring markers of economic welfare like inflation or GDP, they counted people. As far back as 4,000 BC, Babylonians used censuses to estimate their population and determine the resources they needed. Egyptian rulers relied on censuses to organize labour for building the pyramids and redistribute land in response to the Nile’s annual floods. Roman officials conducted regular censuses to assess taxation and military obligations. Across these ancient civilizations, the motivation for these census efforts was consistent. States counted people because they needed to know who they were governing.
At the height of colonialism, censuses served as tools of the administration for control. Colonial powers used these records to identify individuals who were eligible for taxation. Censuses counted the number of able-bodied men who could be conscripted for military service to defend the colonies and enforce the directives of the imperial government. The figures were also used to determine how land should be allocated to new settlers. In some cases, they helped colonial authorities track value. For instance, the British Board of Trade used population counts to track demographic and economic growth and assess the value of individual colonies to the British Empire. This logic has carried on into the modern era. Since the 18th century, the United States has conducted a census every ten years to establish the population within its borders. Mandated by its constitution, the census was originally created to determine the population of each state so that representation in the house of representatives could be apportioned accordingly. Today, census data also guides the distribution of billions of dollars in public funding.
Across thousands of years of governance, there is a consistent idea. Nations count people because governance cannot happen in uncertainty. Censuses happen because governance depends on knowing who exists, where they are and what they need. Population statistics shape everything from taxation and democratic representation to the location of schools, hospitals and transport infrastructure. Censuses help governments estimate labour market growth, plan military recruitment and preserve public health. Now, more than ever, they underpin climate adaptation by identifying who may be most exposed to climate disasters like floods, droughts and extreme heat.
Tom Moultrie, a professor of demography at the University of Cape Town, describes the real value of censuses in the denominators. ‘The sampling frames and the fine-grained cross-tabulations by age, sex, location and other characteristics that let you calculate everything else: death rates, disease prevalence, school-age populations, service backlogs, migration patterns,’ Professor Moultrie told me. He also explained that, ‘a census that gets the topline count roughly right but the underlying structure wrong—as I’d argue happened with South Africa’s 2022 census—can do more damage than one that is honest about a somewhat larger margin of error, because every rate calculated against a distorted denominator inherits that distortion silently.’
A census is one of the foundations of state capacity. Collecting demographic information has implications that extend beyond statistical knowledge to development. Before governments can decide what to build, where to invest or whom to protect, they need a clear picture of the society they govern. The question of Nigeria’s census, then, is not simply whether it matters, but what happens when the count itself becomes increasingly detached from reality.
WHY COUNTING BECAME POLITICAL
The truth is no country knows its exact population. The moment a census ends, it begins to age. Babies are born, people die, families move, migrants arrive and others leave. Governments therefore rely on demographic models, birth and death registrations, household surveys and administrative records to keep their population estimates current. Increasingly, they supplement these estimates with satellite imagery, digital mapping and even anonymized mobile phone data. The issue is not whether governments estimate or not, but how often these figures are anchored by a new census. In countries where censuses are conducted regularly, projections remain reasonably grounded in reality. In Nigeria, two decades have passed since the last national population count. Every estimate published today is an extrapolation based on an image of the country that no longer exists.
Interestingly, Nigeria’s census problem is also one of political ambition. The country’s first nationwide census was conducted in 1921 under British colonial rule, following the amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates in 1914. Like many colonial censuses across Africa, its purpose was administrative rather than demographic. From its inception, the exercise was controversial. Many feared that being counted would lead to higher taxes and this resulted in widespread boycotting, which put the accuracy of the final figures into question. Before publishing, the preliminary figures of southern Nigeria were adjusted upwards. Finally, it was estimated that the population of Nigeria was 18.8 million people.
Subsequent censuses in colonial Nigeria did little to resolve these concerns. According to the National Population Commission (NPC), the 1931 census relied heavily on tax records because many areas were never directly enumerated, while the planned 1941 census was abandoned as the Second World War redirected administrative priorities. By the time another nationwide census was carried out between 1952 and 1953, Nigeria was already moving towards independence, and population figures had become increasingly tied to political representation.
By 1960, Nigeria had gained independence and the census had gone from an administrative exercise into a contest over political power. The first nationwide census after independence, conducted in 1962, was intended to provide an authoritative count of the country’s population. Instead, allegations of inflated figures and other irregularities turned it into one of the most controversial administrative and statistical exercises in Nigeria’s history, and the results were eventually cancelled. At the time Nigeria held three main geographic regions: the Northern Region, Eastern Region and Western Region; each with its own political administration and representation. Population figures for the Northern Region compared to the 1952 census increased by 30 per cent, while those for the Eastern Region and Western Region increased by 70 per cent, respectively. According to the preliminary figures released by the Census Board of 1962, the population of Nigeria was 45.26 million, with northern Nigeria having 22.01 million and the other two regions, which made up southern Nigeria, having a combined figure of 23.25 million. This preliminary result showed that the northern part of the country no longer held the majority share of the population. The result was welcomed by southern politicians but rejected outright by their northern counterparts.
The controversy of the results caused the government under Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to order another census in 1963. The recount of the following year failed to restore confidence. Within a year, the population of northern Nigeria saw a dramatic increase, restoring the region’s demographic majority and its political advantage. At the time, it was estimated that northern Nigeria had a population of 30 million people, no other country in Africa had a population this large. These numbers came to represent tools through which power, political representation and federal resources were managed and distributed in Nigeria.
After ten years, in 1973, the Nigerian government conducted another census. It was supposed to be the most detailed census in the country’s history, with homeless people counted, but the pattern continued. General Yakubu Gowon cancelled the 1973 census before its results could be officially adopted after fresh allegations of inflation and military interference. The 1973 census estimated that the population of Nigeria was 79.76 million.
In 1988, the NPC was constituted and, in 1991, it conducted a census. The NPC estimated that Nigeria had a population of 88.5 million. And then, in 2006, under the leadership of President Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria conducted its most recent census till date. In an effort to right the historical wrongs of census-taking efforts in Nigeria, the government approached counting with a more tech savvy perspective. This time, GPS and satellite imagery were used to obtain the numbers. In the end, the government estimated that Nigeria had a population of 140 million. But these new and improved methods did little to quell concerns like in previous censuses. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, then governor of Lagos State, and representatives for the Ohaneze Ndi Igbo group demanded a recount of the results, but for different reasons. Tinubu called for a recount after a parallel census conducted in Lagos put the state's population at more than 17.5 million, nearly twice the nine million recorded in the official census, while Ohanaeze Ndigbo argued that the figures had artificially reduced the Igbo population to minority status. While census exercises are never perfect, it seems Nigeria has never been able to make a satisfactory attempt. The 2006 census, and others before, show that there need to be more efforts in fixing the structural gaps that make the collection of these numbers so easily contestable.
Even with the successful execution of the 1991 and 2006 censuses, Nigerians’ broad distrust towards population counts never fully disappeared. This complicated history shows that Nigeria’s census challenges are not simply technical failures, but products of decades long political incentives. In the Nigerian federation, where population influences revenue allocation, legislative representation and access to federal resources, the exercise of counting people has never been politically neutral. This is the defining feature of Nigeria’s census. Not only does Nigeria project its population from an outdated census, Nigeria also makes these projections on estimates that have been shaped by power disputes. The question is no longer simply how many Nigerians there are. It is whether the Nigerian state can confidently know itself well enough to plan for the people it seeks to govern.
LIVING INSIDE ESTIMATES
Following the 2006 census, Nigeria has been forced to make substitutes in place for official government statistics. In the absence of an updated census, Nigeria has not stopped making demographic decisions but now relies more heavily on data projections. These projections then shape how we understand labour markets. They determine how unemployment is measured, how education policy is designed, how the national budget is distributed and how governments assess the size of the workforce. But in a country where the foundational population figure has not been refreshed in two decades, even the most basic indicators rest on a shaky foundation.
The result of this is a distortion. For example, youth unemployment rates are determined by dividing the number of unemployed youths by the total youth labour force, then multiplying by 100. The problem is that these estimates may assume a denominator that may or may not reflect reality. Labour force participation rates are modelled from population structures and dynamics that are carried forward from earlier censuses, adjusted for estimated birth and death rates. However, these estimates themselves depend on assumptions about fertility, mortality and migration that are difficult to verify. Thus, making inferences on the labour market becomes difficult.
In the same way, these difficulties persist when measuring the dynamics of urbanization. Nowhere is this more visible than in Lagos State. Urban planning depends on population assumptions, but in Lagos, these numbers are contested. For instance, Lagos State estimates its population at 22 million, but this figure is considerably higher than the 14.8 million reported in the most recent World Population Review data, illustrating the uncertainty surrounding the city’s true population. As such, city planning policies depend on assumptions that don’t keep pace with the reality of the city’s growth. Infrastructure is designed around essential projections that urgently need to be revised. This means that investments are made against an image of the city that may lag behind the reality of what it has become. Unfortunately, climate change is intensifying this problem. Like all developing countries, Nigeria is uniquely exposed to climate disasters. From flooding to desertification, its terrain is becoming increasingly more prone to environmental events. However, when the population distribution is only partially known, climate risk becomes more difficult to map with precision. This has implications for evacuation planning, flood defences and resource allocation. It means that all the hedges Nigeria has against climate disaster are built on demographic pictures that may no longer be reflective of its current state.
John Casterline, professor in population studies emeritus at the Ohio State University, told me that, ‘A country that lacks a census will have less efficiently distributed social services by fine-grained geographic locality, and this will impact on individuals’ day-to-day well-being.’ The lack of vital population data impacts citizens daily and compounds over time to create errors that produce a misallocation of resources and a poorly run state.
There are moments where this gap between Nigeria’s faulty population foundation and demographic reality become briefly visible. In Lagos, one of these moments is with the annual ‘Detty December’ festivities. Each year, the city’s infrastructure struggles under the weight of an inpouring of visitors; people whose numbers the government can neither accurately predict nor adequately prepare for. In December 2025, the general manager of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA), Olalekan Bakare-Oki, described a ‘high influx of people’ into Lagos during the previous December as a reason the agency had expanded its traffic operations, including the introduction of a night shift. LASTMA has also described the festive season as one marked by increased traffic from concerts, carnivals, religious gatherings, and other end-of-year events. What appears as a seasonal planning failure reveals a year-round statistical blindness. The same invisible millions who strain Lagos’ roads in December remain uncounted when thinking of ways to mitigate exposure to flooding emergencies or distribute educational infrastructure citywide. The December crowds briefly expose what is always true: Nigeria is making (or not making) life or death decisions about its people based on a demographic convention that no longer exists.
Experts largely agree that the quality of a country’s census reflects the quality of its state, though it is not a perfect proxy. Conducting a census is both a measure of state capacity and a tool for strengthening it; and the relationship runs both ways. Professor Casterline touched on the bitter irony of censuses: ‘the countries that most need reliable population data are often those with the least capacity to produce it.’
ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF MEASURING
While the Nigerian government has struggled to make estimations of its population, alternative methods have emerged. Telecommunication networks, like Glo and MTN, generate continuous records of mobile connections that can provide information about where people live and move. The scale of these networks is substantial: Nigeria recorded more than 219 million active voice subscriptions and 164 million active internet subscriptions in the first quarter of 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The data can also be disaggregated geographically; Lagos, for example, recorded nearly 26 million active voice subscriptions and 19 million active internet subscriptions during the same period. Aggregated across millions of connections, such data can reveal patterns of population density, settlement, and even urbanization, offering a near-continuous source of information that can complement traditional census data.
Another technology that has emerged is satellite imagery. Nighttime light data shows where economic activity is concentrated, and high-resolution daytime imagery can show where people live . In formal research, these technologies have been paired with econometric methods to map and model rural market size and these perform well at creating these estimates. In northern Nigeria, researchers have used high-resolution satellite imagery to map human settlements across Kano and Kaduna states and combine these maps with small-area population surveys to estimate population density independently of the national census. The resulting maps identified residential areas at an approximately 90-metre resolution, providing population estimates for areas where reliable census data are limited. These approaches demonstrate how satellite imagery can provide a more geographically detailed picture of settlement and population distribution between censuses.
Professor Casterline envisions technological advances making it possible to move beyond the traditional practices of collecting population data: ‘One should not underestimate what could become feasible technologically relatively soon. If it becomes feasible to avoid collecting dwelling-by-dwelling information, this could be hugely cheaper in terms of finances, time, and effort.’
Digital mapping systems capture movement through roads and cities in real time. Transportation apps aggregate data on traffic flows. Payment systems and digital financial services reveal concentrations of economic activity. None of these systems were designed with a population counting purpose. Nonetheless, they are increasingly being used to piece together an informative guide to the population. Estonia, for example, conducted its 2021 population census by combining information from administrative registers and government databases. In counting their population, they used data from education, health, commercial and even traffic registry databases to determine the size of their population. Nigeria does not need to replicate this system example, but examples like this can be directive in gearing us towards new ways of population measurement. Instead of thinking about the census as a once in a decade exercise, governments can build dynamic population estimates.
While these forms of data serve as proxies for population statistics, experts do not use them without caution. Mobile phone data for example can be highly limited because phone ownership is selective by poverty, age and gender. In many countries, users may have multiple SIM cards, and while these data may point to geographical spread, they provide no demographic detail. This is also true for satellite imagery. A study of 147 communities in Burkina Faso found that 57 per cent were completely undetected by nighttime-light data over the 1992–2012 period, with smaller settlements particularly likely to be missed. Any machine learning models built on the foundation of these data will likely inherit their blind spots.
Additionally, while other sources such as network coverage data do not, and should not replace census data, they provide continuity, allowing government officials, researchers and citizens to maintain a picture of the country that reflects current realities. But these new dynamics raise crucial questions about who gets to count a population. If different institutions can produce competing versions of a national headcount, who has the authority to define the country’s demographic data? As Professor Moultrie rightly described, ‘each of these tools is genuinely useful in combination with ground-truth data. None of them is a reliable substitute for it.’
Since population counts are so inextricably tied to statehood and identity, it matters who gets to count a people. These statistics are necessary for the allocation of resources and balancing of political power. As the world becomes an increasingly digitalized place, and with the democratization of the internet, it is possible we are moving towards a future where important statistics like population counts and dynamics are not only collected but stored by multiple agents outside the government. Maybe the best future we can imagine is one where these statistics are controlled by the public to ensure the safe and responsible use of these figures.
THE FOUNDATION OF A NATION
For much of modern history, the population census has acted as the primary way a state learns about itself. Conducting a census is the moment a government tries to convert the abstract idea of a society into something legible; a series of numbers that can be used to prepare and anticipate for the future. Fundamentally, the question of counting is a question of state capacity. A country that cannot count itself does not have the resources to do so. It is difficult to govern what you cannot measure, or to distribute resources fairly among people whose composition and circumstances you do not fully understand. A reliable and up-to-date census is not the destination; it is the foundation on which other national decisions are built.
Nigeria’s experience with census slightly complicates this idea. Our census history shows what happens when counting a population becomes entangled with maintaining the power status quo. It highlights the result of making population estimates politically consequential: when population determines representation, resources and power, the census itself becomes a site of political contestation. Nigeria’s census woes also reveal what happens when the statistical foundation of a government is not regularly updated. At the same time, the way we understand populations is changing. Population data is becoming less centralized, with national censuses now existing alongside other modes of measurement, including satellite imagery, telecommunications network data and digital platforms.
The question of Nigeria’s census future has moved beyond whether the country will conduct another census soon. It is also about whether the census will remain the primary way modern states understand the people they govern. Perhaps Nigeria, and Africa, represent the future of population measurements: a shift from a world where populations are counted periodically to one where they are inferred continuously. This exposes a deeper change in how states understand themselves, not simply by asking how many people live within their borders, but by examining the ways they come to know the populations they govern⎈
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