Separatists killed two people and a census worker was feared drowned Tuesday as officials attempted the first population count in 15 years in this sprawling nation riven by ethnic, religious and economic tensions.
Previous attempts to count Africa’s most populous nation _ at least the 10th largest in the world _ have failed as factions schemed to get a bigger share of the political power and government coffers fueled by oil money.
Latest estimates say there are anywhere from 120 million to 160 million people in Nigeria. More than 10,000 people have died and some 3.4 million have been forced from their homes in explosions of violence here since 2000.
On Tuesday, two people were killed in the southeastern Anambra state by a group hoping to resurrect the Republic of Biafra, which declared independence from Nigeria in 1967 and triggered a 32-month war that killed more than 1 million people.
A police official said the separatists attacked a police station in Nnewi, killing one person, after officers arrested their colleagues for trying to disrupt the census.
In nearby Onitsha, suspected separatists hacked to death another person, the officer said. “One of his hands was completely cut off,” Onitsha resident Isotonu Achor told The Associated Press after he saw the body.
One census official was missing in northern Kano state and feared drowned when a boat carrying census workers accidentally capsized, Duro Famujuro, the local National Population Commission officer, told reporters.
Elsewhere, census workers complaining of shortages of forms, pencils and erasers did not get going until noon in many parts of the country that is the world’s eighth largest supplier of crude oil at a time of rising prices.
In some places, the count had not begun by late afternoon and Nigeria’s state television showed scenes of angry census workers shouting at supervisors. Some complained they hadn’t been paid.
The governor of Borno state said there were not enough workers to count Nigerians in the scheduled five days.
“Borno state may reject the outcome of the exercise if steps are not taken to correct these anomalies,” Gov. Modu Sheriff said.
But the chairman of the National Population Commission expressed confidence the count would be done by Saturday. Some 840,000 field workers have been deployed to count the nation at a cost to Nigeria’s government of $246 million. Britain has donated $12.7 million and the European Union $1.2 million.
The streets of Lagos, Nigeria’s bustling commercial capital, were deserted Tuesday as was the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, in reaction to a local government three-day shutdown restricting movement from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The restrictions, to prevent residents slipping out to states of origin to boost headcounts there, affected people all over Nigeria as airlines grounded flights.
The count’s implications are serious in a country where the federal treasury and council and legislative seats are meted out based on population size.
In an address to the nation Tuesday, President Olusegun Obasanjo noted Nigeria is using technology including satellite images and scannable census forms in order to help verify the census and prevent fraud.
Then he allowed national television to film him as he answered questions of two census officials. He said his official residence in Abuja has five bedrooms, that the toilet facilities were “very good,” the water supplied by the public utility, cooking done by electricity and gas, that he thought he had one or two radios and a television in every room and a bicycle for exercise. He said his regular occupation was farming and that he had a college degree in engineering.
Asked if he was still going to school, he drew laughter by declaring “I am still going to the school of life” at a little over 69 years old.
On Monday, census officials rioted over pay in at least three northern towns, witnesses said, burning several cars and setting ablaze a local government office. On Saturday, at least five people were killed in an ethnic clash over census boundaries in southwestern Ondo state.
Nigeria this year has seen fatal riots between Christians and Muslims and confronts a new threat from southern militants demanding a greater share of oil wealth who have attacked petroleum installations and kidnapped foreign workers.