How many Nigerians are there? How many are Christians and how many are Muslims? How many are men and how many are women? How many people live in each state within Nigeria? These questions, and more, will be answered by the 2005 National Population and Housing Census ('Census 2005'), which is currently being planned by our National Population Commision (NPC).

The 2005 census will commence on Tuesday, the 29th of November and end on Saturday, the 3rd of December, 2005 (source). Please be informed!

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Census 2005: Why and How will it be conducted? (Publication of the National Population Commission)
Apr 25, 2005, 13:13

[I]What is a census?[/I]

A population census is the counting of all the people living in a country at a particular time. It collects information on the size, distribution, composition and other social/economic characteristic of population.

[I]Why is a census necessary?[/I]

Information collected during a census is used to assess the current welfare needs of the population as well as to project future needs to assist planners to make realistic future development needs

[I]The 2005 census will tell us[/I]

• The number of person in Nigeria
• The number of males and females
• The age composition of the population
• The level of literacy
• The level of employment/unemployment and types of occupation
• And other information.

[I]Uses of census data[/I]

[I]Education[/I]
• Data from 2005 census will assist government In determining levels of literacy and planning for education by providing information on:
• The number of people who can read and write
• The level of education attained by those who have been to school
• The number of school age children presently not in school.

[I]Health[/I]

• Data from the 2005 census will assist government at all levels in planning for the health of the people by providing the information on numbers of people and their health needs.

[I]Employment[/I]

• The 2005 census will assist in establishing the level of employment/un employment for future planning and job creation by providing the following information:
o Number of employed persons and type of work
o Distribution of unemployed persons
o Number of persons in schools that will require employment in due course?

[I]Gender Empowerment[/I]

• Women are often marginalized and denied access to opportunities for educational, social and political fulfilment. The 2005 census will assist governments in formulating appropriate intervention strategies.

[I]Assessment of development programmes[/I]

• Data from the 2005 census will provide basis for evaluation of the various development programmes undertaken by the governments and NGOs.

[I]Foreign Policy[/I]

• The 2005 census will help the federal government in promoting our foreign policy objectives by providing information on:
• The number of foreigners living in Nigeria?
• The nationalities of the foreign population?

[I]The Private Sector[/I]
• The private sector needs census data to plan production, marketing and make informed investment decisions in the country.

[I]Housing[/I]
• For governments to come up with effective housing policies, as well as improve availability of houses and amenities, it is necessary to take stock of the current housing condition and amenities such as electricity and water supply.

[I]Pre-census 2005 activities[/I]

• Enumeration Area Demarcation
• Design of Census Questionnaire
• Trial census
• Soliciting support of leader and the public
• Recruiting and training of census personnel.

[I]Enumeration:[/I]
• Only persons physically seen will be counted
• Persons will be counted in their houses
• All persons will be fingerprinted to ensure that nobody is counted twice.

[I]Questions to be asked[/I]

• Names
• Age
• Sex
• Relationship to head of household
• Nationality
• Local Government of origin
• Place of usual residence
• Duration of residence
• Previous residence
• Disability
• Literacy
• Schooling status
• Education
• Marital status
• Work status
• Occupation.

[I]Questions on housing[/I]:

• Type of living house
• Type of housing units
• Number of sleeping rooms
• Main construction materials used for the floors and the roofing
• Tenure status (rented, owned etc)
• Main source of water supply
• Toilet facilities
• Cooking fuel
• Energy for lighting (electricity, gas, kerosene, solar, candle and others)
• Methods of waste disposal
• Ownership of household facilities (e.g. Radio, Television, Phone).

[I]Confidentiality[/I]

• All information given to enumerators will be treated with utmost confidentiality.
• Enumerators who breach this confidentiality will be punishable by law.

[I]Census 2005 will not be used for[/I]

• Taxation purposes
• Inflating numbers of certain communities.

[I]Census offences[/I]

• To refuse to be counted
• To be counted more than once
• To give false information to the enumerator
• To obstruct the enumerator in the discharge of his/her duties.

[I]Your role as a patriotic Nigerian[/I]

• Creating general awareness on the conduct of the 2005 census among our communities, families and friends
• Educating people on the methodologies to be adopted in the conduct of the 2005 census and helping them to overcome prejudices
• Being vanguard for the accuracy, reliability and acceptability of 2005 census.

Census 2005. Together we can make it!

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You have been informed! Monitor this page for updates.

Seun, the ministry of internal affairs should pay you o, for all these publicity

Whatever the government is doing affects all of us, so I'm glad that the office of public communications has embraced the web when even technology companies like Globacom have refused to post their Press Releases on their sites.

@seun sorry to dissapoint you but nobody will be counted. we will only be tagged with purple fingerpaint and at the end they will choose the number that best maintains the staus quo and if that has changed they will choose the most politically acceptable number.

NigeriaSat-1 is a waste. It should reveal their lies by showing us how a village with 40 roofs has a population of 5000.

Thank you Kodewrita.As if you know what is on my mind......talk....talk...no action that is the Nigerian Govt. for you.

The Census of .....was it 2001 or 2002(can't remember now),wetin dem take am do?We no even know the results till today!The more they do things like this,the less people will be interested in it.

But seriously Seun, you should let them know what you're doing o.You'll be surprised how much one oga for Min. of Public Affairs don siddon upon to disseminate this info.

LAGOS, 8 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - When Nigeria conducts a long-overdue national census in November, no data will be collected showing the religious or ethnic origins of its citizens.

Africa’s most populous country of more than 126 million people, split between a mainly Muslim north and largely Christian south, is frequently plagued by ethnic and religious upheavals.

The authorities fear that highlighting those divisions in a national headcount will only inflame tensions.

A meeting of the advisory National Council of State, comprising the country’s 36 state governors and former heads of state, called by President Olusegun Obasanjo in January, had advised against considering religion and ethnicity in the census.

"After exhaustive discussion, it was resolved that, as it was not on the questionnaire for the 1991 census, the issue of ethnicity and religion would also not feature on the questionnaire for the 2005 national census," the body said in a statement after the meeting.

The advice was accepted by the government; the head of the National Population Commission, Samaila Makama, subsequently justified the decision as a way of avoiding the political acrimony that has surrounded all earlier attempts at a detailed population breakdown.

"Since each religious and ethnic group would prefer numerical superiority over the other, it might be safer to ignore religion and ethnicity since there would be the temptation by each group to explore ways to have an edge over the other," said Makama.

However, rival religious and ethnic interest groups appear united in their demand that religion, and ethnicity, should be considered.

Both Christian and Muslim groups have threatened to boycott the census – a potentially massive blow to its credibility - if the government does not review its position.

Peter Akinola, president of the Christian Association (CAN) of Nigeria and leader of the Anglican Church announced in June that his members had been directed to shun the census if religion and ethnicity were not on the questionnaire.

"Any national census which falls short of that is not worth its salt and will not be accepted," said Akinola. CAN groups the major Christian denominations, including the fast-growing Pentecostal churches.

Similar threats have also come from the Conference of Islamic Organisations (CIO) - made up of 27 Islamic associations – which accuses Obasanjo, a southern Christian, of running an anti-Muslim government.

The group has said it will boycott the census if it was not designed to "reflect all necessary data concerning Nigerians, including ethnicity and religious inclinations, in order to dispel suspicion and provide accurate information."

Nigeria has had a difficult history of conducting population counts. The first census conducted by British colonial rulers in 1952-53, and used to determine political constituencies and the allocation of resources, found the north had the largest share of the population.

A subsequent count in 1962 was plagued by widespread inflation of figures leading to the cancellation of the result. Another census held a year later was accepted after bitter wrangling and allegations of manipulation, the fallout of which contributed to the political crises that resulted in the 1967-70 civil war.

Yet another attempt in 1973 was cancelled amid claims and counter-claims again of manipulation of the figures by the regions seeking political advantage.

Under military ruler Gen Ibrahim Babangida, who organised the 1991 census – the last successful exercise - the decision was first taken to remove religion and ethnicity from the categories to be counted.

That year’s census produced a population figure of 86.5 million, estimated to have since exceeded 126 million at an annual growth rate of more than three percent.

After winning a second four-year term in 2003, Obasanjo now feels confident enough to take on the census challenge.

But his six years in power has seen regular outbursts of ethnic, religious and communal violence in which thousands have died. The adoption of the strict Islamic legal code or Shari’ah by more than a dozen states in the north has upset neighbouring Christian communities, intermittently triggering sectarian bloodletting.

In the oil-rich southern Niger Delta, years of unrest over pollution and the lack of development spending has overtime translated into a political demand by ethnic militants for more local control over oil resources. In the parts of southeast Nigeria dominated by ethnic Igbos, calls for a repeat of the attempted secession that resulted in civil war are gaining acceptance.

In the north, political leaders including serving state governors are insisting that population and land mass will continue to be used as the basis for allocation of federal revenue, while at the same time insisting that religion and ethnicity should not be counted.

Speaking after a meeting of northern governors last year, Kaduna State Governor Ahmed Makarfi said states in the region would boycott the census if the two issues were included in the questionnaire.

But political leaders from the country’s mainly Christian centre and southeast, after a meeting last week in the capital, Abuja, issued a statement advising the National Population Commission to include religion and ethnicity among the issues required in the census.

"We believe that these would assist, in no small measure, in implementing any meaningful national development plan," said the statement, also signed by state governors from the two regions.

Political analysts believe the strong feelings being expressed on the coming census leaves Obasanjo with a delicate job - with potentially explosive consequences.

"All these pulling-at-the-seams of the nation by rival groups could combine with the census issue and create a combustible mix for Nigeria," analyst Ike Onyekwere told IRIN.

"In the end it is for Obasanjo to decide if he wants a proper census or one that is politically expedient," Onyekwere added.

NIGERIA: Planned census facing boycott threats, a UN Report

This is total waste of money, and it only maintains the status quo. why is the north so insecure if thier population is a much as they claim it to be?

they wont even give a state by state breakdown, so tis a total waste

before i finish this whole thing, i must say, Kodewrita just made my day, by making me laugh. !!

Okay now my input.

If they can really have a good and fair censorship, it'll be great. If they can count the people and do all the things a census is meant for, it'll be extremely helpfull to those in Nigeria. The question here is, will people go out and be a part of the counting?? Most people (hausa's especially) won't let u count their family members. The man of the house would rather keep them in a hole, than allowing u into his house for counting.

I think its a big mistake not to include the two infos in the demographic data. It is indeed a required demographic data to know how many Yorubas, hausas, Ibos etc are there (and how many christians, muslims etc) ,

I believe whoever says these should not be included should also abandon the federal character princinple, which was based on ethnic and race diversity. In essence, it looks like OBJ and co have aligned to continue to cheat Nigerians with the old 1961 demographic data. If we can do it in previous sensus prior 1991, why cant we do it now? Something odious is being protected at all cost.

this census is another way of sharing our national resources amongst a few politicians, it will not improve the way of life of the ordinary nigerian on our streets.

Well, it has started.