The Federal Republic of Nigeria has not conducted a census since 2006. As of 2026, that is twenty years without an enumerated population figure — the longest census gap of any country with a population over 100 million, and the longest of any major democracy. Every other African country with a population above 50 million has censused at least once in the last decade. Nigeria has not. The reason is not technical, financial or epidemiological. It is political.
## The cancelled censuses
A Nigerian census has been disputed, repudiated, annulled or postponed in every decade since independence:
- 1962 — abandoned. The Eastern Region claimed 12.4 million; the North initially returned 22.5 million; the figures were revised upward without agreement; the Federal Census Board cancelled the exercise.
- 1963 — re-run, official total 55.6 million, North 53.5 per cent. The Eastern and Mid-Western Regions rejected the figures. The Cabinet accepted them under protest. The 1963 numbers became the basis of federal revenue allocation and parliamentary seats — and a foundational grievance of the Civil War.
- 1973 — counted, published preliminary figure of 79.7 million, annulled in 1975 by the Murtala-led federal government on the ground of irreconcilable inflation in several states.
- 1991 — under the Babangida administration, with significant donor support from the UNFPA, returned 88.5 million. Universally regarded as the most credible Nigerian census ever conducted, though Lagos State and several Southern states formally rejected their counts as too low.
- 2006 — under the Obasanjo administration, returned 140,431,790. The exercise excluded direct questions on ethnicity and religion to remove two principal sources of dispute; the omission is itself the subject of continuing controversy. Lagos State, under Governor Bola Tinubu, formally rejected the federal figure (Lagos was returned at 9.0 million; the Lagos State Government's parallel count claimed 17.5 million) and the dispute went to the Supreme Court (still unresolved on the substantive figure).
- 2016 — postponed.
- 2018 — postponed.
- 2022 — postponed.
- 2023 — postponed indefinitely by the Tinubu administration, citing electoral cycle and budget constraints.
- 2025 — the National Population Commission announced a March 2025 enumeration; on 5 February 2025 the federal government postponed again.
## Why Nigeria cannot count itself
Every Nigerian census has been a federal allocation fight in numerical form. Three federal mechanisms depend directly on the population figure:
- Revenue allocation. The horizontal formula by which monthly Federation Account revenue is shared among the 36 states and 774 local governments weights population at 30 per cent (the largest single weight). An additional 1 per cent goes by population density. A 10 per cent under-count of any state's population is roughly a 3 per cent cut in its federal allocation in perpetuity.
- Parliamentary seats. Constituency boundaries for the National Assembly and the State Houses of Assembly are population-derived. A census revision reshapes the electoral map.
- The North–South balance. Every census since 1952 has returned a Northern majority. The post-2006 estimated balance is approximately 53 per cent Northern, 47 per cent Southern. A credible 2025 census could move that figure in either direction by enough to redistribute political power across the federation. No incumbent has wanted to assume that risk.
## What we are using instead
With no census in twenty years, every official Nigerian population figure since 2007 is a projection, not a count. The National Bureau of Statistics, the National Population Commission, the World Bank, the UN Population Division and the federal Ministry of Finance use different projection methodologies and arrive at materially different figures:
- National Population Commission: 2024 estimate 223.8 million
- UN World Population Prospects 2024: 2024 estimate 227.9 million
- World Bank WDI: 2024 estimate 227.9 million
- NBS demographic statistics bulletin 2023: 216.7 million
- CIA World Factbook: 236.7 million (2024)
- Worldometer: 228.7 million (live, January 2025)
The spread between the lowest and highest serious estimates is approximately 20 million people — roughly the population of Ghana, or of Sri Lanka. Federal budgets, donor programmes, vaccine logistics, school-enrolment targets, food-security models and electoral planning all run on numbers that differ by the population of a medium-sized country.
## The downstream effects
1. Federal revenue allocation is fought on stale data. The 30-per-cent population weighting in the horizontal allocation formula has, since 2007, been calculated on the 2006 enumeration projected forward. The Niger Delta states (smaller, oil-producing) and Lagos (under-counted at 9 million in 2006, now somewhere between 18 and 25 million) regard the result as a transfer from them to states whose populations have grown more slowly.
2. Local government allocations cannot be rationally reformed. The 774 LGAs each receive a federal allocation. Many were created on 1996 populations. A 2025 census would force a re-drawing of LGA boundaries and a corresponding redistribution of local-government funds — exactly the redistribution every state government has reason to fear.
3. Electoral planning runs on extrapolation. INEC's voter register has more registered voters than the projected adult population in several states. The 2023 register held 93.5 million voters against a projected 18-and-over population of roughly 110 million — a registration rate of 85 per cent that exceeds every comparable country and is, on its face, statistically implausible. Without a census, INEC cannot reconcile.
4. Donor and federal social programmes guess. UNICEF's school-enrolment, polio-vaccination and child-protection programmes; the Federal Ministry of Health's National Health Insurance roll-out; the National Cash Transfer Programme; the National Social Register — each runs on demographic projections that differ from one agency to the next.
5. The North–South question is suspended in mid-air. The persistent demographic question — whether the population balance between the two halves of the country has shifted decisively in one direction over twenty years — cannot be answered. Every claim is contested; no measurement exists.
## Why the postponement is rational
For any incumbent President, a 2025 or 2026 census carries asymmetric political risk. The upside of a well-conducted enumeration is a more rational federal budget allocation, an honest electoral register and credible social-policy targeting. The downside is the political crisis that erupts when the published numbers shift revenue or seats away from a particular state, region or zone. The 1973 figure was annulled because the political cost of accepting it was higher than the political cost of cancelling it. Every subsequent administration has reached the same calculation.
The Tinubu government's February 2025 postponement was the eighth since 2016. The next scheduled census window, announced by the National Population Commission in November 2025, is 2027. On the current historical rate, the probability that the 2027 enumeration will be conducted and accepted as planned is approximately the probability that the 2024, 2022, 2018 and 2016 windows would have been — which is to say, low.
Nigeria is the most populous country on the African continent. It is also the only one that does not know, to within twenty million people, how populous it is. The most explosive number in the federation is the one nobody is willing to count.
Figure 1
Every Nigerian census attempt, 1866–2026
Bar height = enumerated population (millions). Colour = outcome: ▇ accepted · ▇ disputed · ▇ cancelled · ▇ pending. The country has not completed a census in twenty years.