₦airaland Forum

lawani:
You can't be using a fraudulent census figure of as far back as 2006. NIN registration figures in the SW should surpass that number. Voters registration figures is there too. For example Lagos NIN is over 13 million and the SE is like 10 million. If Lagos is 23 million people in total, what will be the population of the SE? That is a common entrance question for kids. So we have enough information backed with biometric data to estimate the population of any state. Then we also have active sim cards as well as revenue all of which can not be faked

Then non natives in Yoruba land are insignificant in number when compared to the Yoruba in other places. How many non natives do we even have compared to the population of our people in major urban centers across the country not to talk of the rural areas. There are millions of Yoruba in Abuja, Kano, Kaduna, Jos, PH, Onitsha, Awka, Enugu, Calabar, Asaba, Owerri and etc. They cancel out the meager number of non Yoruba in Yoruba land or do you want to write off all those Yoruba? If you ask everyone to go back to their cities the population of Yoruba land will swell. The Yoruba had eighty percent of cities in Nigeria before the British came

If you remove immigrants from the SE the population will drop very significantly. Onitsha for instance is made up of majority immigrant from neighbouring Igbo states and other places. An Igbo woman told me there are probably as many Hausas in Enugu as Igbos. I know and have met Yoruba that grew up in Enugu, PH, Aba and etc. You talk as if it is only the SW people migrate to. Lagos is the most cosmopolitan of SW cities but Lagos isn't as cosmopolitan as Abuja, Jos, Kaduna, PH, Warri and Benin. What it has more than them is population but they are more of settler cities by percentage

There is nothing like equal representation of states via a military constitution. We didn't sign up for that rubbish which makes Lagos, Kano or Oyo equal to Bayelsa or Ekiti state. It is a military imposition. Nobody agreed to it. 55 million people in the SW are not the same weight as 19 million people in the SE

shortgun:
Yes the 2006 census was controversial and politicized....virtually every Nigerian census has been like that. There's always inflation of figures in some regions and undercounting/ suppression in other regions. People of the south east doesn't even agree with the numbers allocated to them. We feel our real population should be over 100 million. That being said, we still can only rely on that 2006 official census.

You can't use NIN registrations in place population.
NIN is done by people who has access to it, by people who leave in urban cities, many migrants register where they live/work. So naturally , cities like Lagos, Kano, port harcourt and Abuja will lead other states.
Also active SIM cards and revenue only shows economic activities which should naturally correlates with commerce hubs and has nothing to do with native population..... Sim cards registration in Lagos are done by everyone resident in Lagos and not just only the natives.

[To settle the issue of population once and for all, Chief Eze Duruiheoma who served as Chairman of the National Population Commission in 2014 proposed including questions on ethnicity and religion in the planned 2018 national census. By so doing, we'll have the accurate data of how many Yorubas we have in Nigeria, how many Ijaws are residing in Enugu State, how many Hausas are in osun state and how many Igbos are in Lagos State.

In February 2017, he publicly disclosed that the National Population Commission intended to add these questions to the census questionnaire to obtain more accurate demographic data. Because of this, the 2018 census was cancelled and Chief Eze Duruiheoma was subsequently removed as Chairman of the National Population Commission.

The question is: who benefits most from the current population figures? Who stands to gain if ethnicity is included in Nigeria's population data, and who stands to lose?

For you to say non natives in Yoruba land are insignificant in number is not true

AhmedPeacemaker:
As of October 1 2026, Nigeria’s six geo-political zones will become official and constitutional organs of government.
This means that there will be four tiers of administration in Nigeria - Federal, Zonal, State, and Local governments

[2] Nigeria will have six geo-political zones, with each being made up of seven states. Our constitution will prohibit the creation of any more states after these 42

[3] As part of this restructure, we will abolish the federal allocation regime and replace it with resource control under which states will remain the federating units. Revenue distribution will be as follows - States: 50%; Federation account: 20%; Geo-political zones: 15%; National trust fund: 15%. We shall gradually migrate towards this to achieve our targeted goal by 2040

[4] Geopolitical zones will be responsible for maintaining regional police forces to augment the activities of the Nigerian Police Force

[5] Each geopolitical zone will be constitutionally obliged to generate, distribute, and transmit electricity within its domain

[6] Every year, the chairman of the geopolitical zone will rotate among the six governors within it. A chief executive will be appointed to manage what will be a civil service structure

[7] Ultimate authority for the governing of each geo-political zone rests with the committee of governors.
There will also be committees of commissioners to deal with matters such as education, health, housing, transport, security, etc

[8] Each geopolitical zone authority will be responsible for secondary specialist healthcare. They will build specialist hospitals in areas such as oncology, HIV/Aids, renal failure, dementia, reproductive health, dermatology, etc

[9] These will be the 42 states that make up the six geopolitical zones:

South-South
[1] Bayelsa State - Yenagoa
[2] West Izon State - Patani
[3] Rivers State - Port Harcourt
[4] Cross River State - Calabar
[5] Akwa Ibom State - Uyo
[6] Edo State - Benin
[7] Delta State - Warri

Northeast
[1] Mambilla State - Gashaka
[2] Taraba State - Jalingo
[3] Adamawa State - Yola
[4] Borno State - Maiduguri
[5] Yobe State - Damaturu
[6] Bauchi State - Bauchi
[7] Gombe State - Gombe

Southeast
[1] Anioma State - Asaba
[2] Orashi State - Omoku
[3] Anambra State - Awka
[4] Imo State - Owerri
[5] Enugu State - Enugu
[6] Abia State - Umuahia
[7] Ebonyi State - Abakaliki

North-Central
[1] Abuja State - Abuja
[2] Gurara State - Kafanchan
[3] Benue State - Makurdi
[4] Plateau State - Jos
[5] Nasarawa State - Lafia
[6] Kogi State - Lokoja
[7] Niger State - Minna

Southwest
[1] Odo Oya State - Ilorin
[2] Oyo State - Ibadan
[3] Ogun State - Abeokuta
[4] Lagos State - Ikeja
[5] Ondo - Akure
[6] Ekiti - Ado-Ekiti
[7] Osun - Oshogbo

Northwest
[1] Sokoto State - Sokoto
[2] Kebbi State - Birnin Kebbi
[3] Kaduna State - Kaduna
[4] Katsina State - Katsina
[5] Kano State - Kano
[6] Jigawa State - Dutse
[7] Zamfara State - Gusua

[10] If any state is unable to meet its running costs, its geopolitical zone is constitutionally obliged to step in and bail it out. If not, the federal government will declare a state of emergency in that state"

lawani:
I am basing my population estimate on the assumption that everyone that needs NIN has done it which includes all children sitting for WAEC upwards and everyone with a bank account. For voters registration, the system will knock your registration out if it is duplicated. Active sim cards too are used by real people who recharge the sim cards. All the data are biometric backed and they tell approximately the same story. They are as valid as any population census.

You should understand that you can't focus on Yoruba land and say it is full of immigrant. If you stop a taxi in Onitsha or hire a bricklayer, aluminium worker and etc the person is most likely Yoruba. The market in Onitsha have sections dominated by the Yoruba. So don't come with the notion that only Yoruba land has non indigenes. The Yoruba in other places outnumber the non natives in Yoruba land by far and Lagos is hugely populated but it isn't the most cosmopolitan city in Nigeria.

My point is that the population of the SW is less than the population of Yoruba in Nigeria. The Yoruba are traditionally city dwellers and they are in cities all over the country

The people that are cheated by population census are the Yoruba. Do you accept that before Igbos were known to the Yoruba, the population of the SE would not have exceeded by much if at all the population of Oyo state? Nigerian abracadabra gave five states to the SE and one to Oyo state that contained the two largest cities in west Africa in the nineteenth century ie Ogbomosho and Ibadan. We are not talking of Oyo and the other numerous towns yet o! then the villages. There is no doubt which group is being cheated in Nigeria. Use even any output you can think of to judge from number of lawyers to number of Profs to number of schools and etc. There is no debate unless you don't want to be honest. It is the Yoruba that is the casualty of the fraudulent census in Nigeria

lawani:
States should be granted on demand as the Midwest was granted in 1963 but a state with 2 million dollars in revenue should not by any means expect to have the same number of senators as another state with 20 million dollars in revenue

Western Nigeria messed up in 1960 by agreeing to join Nigeria when it was far more advanced than the rest of Nigeria

Western Nigeria had a budget of 55 million pounds in 1960, the North had 7 million pounds and the East had 12 million pounds. Yet our people in the west agreed to go into such a union and we and Nigeria at large are yet to recover from that decision

seunmsg:
The SE is too small to have equal numbers of states with the SW and NW. also, Bayelsa is currently the smallest state in Nigeria, you can’t further create another West Ijaw state out of it for the Ijaw people.

By Odo Oya, I’m sure you’re trying to put Kwara and Okun together into a state. If that is your intention, then it should remain a state in the North Central and not south west. We will create Ibadan state out of the south west to get to 7. What you’ve proposed is simply an attempt to shortchanged the south west.