Nigeria’s first census in 15 years got off to a shaky start Tuesday with several incidents reported around Africa’s most populous country, amid assurances by President Olusegun Obasanjo that the headcount will go smoothly.
Obasanjo is determined to find out just how many people there are in Africa’s most populous country. A 1991 count put the population figure at 88.9 million, but recent UN and government estimates put it closer to between 120 and 150 million.
The start of census 2006 was delayed by up to six hours across the nation because of logistical difficulties and boycotts by census officials unhappy that they have not yet been paid wages. In the southeastern trading city of Onitsha, police fired shots into the air to disperse a group of protesters who were attempting to disrupt the count, an AFP correspondent reported.
The protesters were suspected to be members of the banned Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), who are agitating for a separate state for ethnic Igbos.
“We are not taking part in the census,” MASSOB spokesman David Chinedu told AFP. “We have sensitised our people against the census because we are not Nigerians. We are Biafrans.” In 1967, a bid to create a Republic of Biafra led to a brutal three-year civil war between secessionists and federal forces, in which about one million people lost their lives.
Markets in the sprawling commercial city were open and business activities were in full swing.
“We are not part of the exercise because we are not Nigerians.
We are Biafrans. Previous censuses have not benefitted the Iboman” (ethnic Igbo),” said one trader, Valentine Okpala.
Tempers are rising in Nigeria and some fear the headcount exercise could reignite ethnic, regional and religious tensions that threaten to tear the country apart.
Emotions are being stoked by a constant struggle for influence between three main ethnic groups — the Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo — while the roughly 50-50 split between Muslims and Christians upped the ante even further.
Many groups want to maximise their turnout in the census to push their case for a greater share in government funding and political influence as well as a hand in Nigeria’s oil reserves, the largest in Africa.
Others like MASSOB does not want to be counted at all.
Also in Onitsha, about 480 kilometres (300 miles) east of Lagos, some 200 census officials have threatened to boycott the exercise because they have not been paid.
Onitsha census official Emma Nwakile told AFP that there were problems which had delayed the exercise.
“We are having some logistics problems in terms of distribution of materials and that is why we have not been able to start. But everything will soon be over… I am sure things will get better,” Nwakile said.
In nearby Asaba town, Delta State capital, a census supervisor, Paulson Aideloji was upbeat about the success of the exercise but said that six-hour delay may hamper counting.
“We have just counted three households. In fact we started late due to late arrival of materials but we are happy to say that the exercise is progressing and people are responding positively now,” he said.
Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos turned into a virtual ghost town Tuesday with few counters being spotted as residents obeyed a state order to stay indoors and be counted.
In Abuja, the nation’s capital, the exercise got to a poor start as most residents said that they were yet to see counters late Tuesday afternoon, despite the fact that workers were asked to work half-day.
In the northern cities of Kano, Katsina and Zaria and Owerri, Okwe and Awka in southeast, counting also started off slowly.
President Obasanjo early Tuesday pledged his government’s “total commitment” to making the exercise a success. In a nationwide radio and television broadcast to mark the opening of the 2006 population and housing census, Obasanjo said his government was “totally committed to the successful conduct of the national census,” which will run for five days until March 25.