How Many People Are in Nigeria?
Before 2023, I used to argue that Nigeria is made up of 200 million people, even though I do not believe that the distribution is correctly allocated for political reasons. For instance, I don’t believe that Kano is more populated than Lagos, having spent time in both cities.
The Economist once reported this:
“Nigeria’s population has proven tricky to pin down. Africapolis, a French-funded research project, used satellite mapping to estimate the population of towns and cities in 2010. It found several cities, mostly in the north, had hundreds of thousands fewer people than the 2006 census counted. But even those data are not entirely trustworthy: it later transpired that the researchers had underestimated urbanization in the densely populated Niger Delta.”
So, the census is a sham; it’s politically motivated.
The image below is a satellite image. What can you observe?
This is why I do not believe the next census is guaranteed not to reveal the truth. The only time we will get a reliable census is when federal allocation is no longer tied to how many people are in the states. See why I want restructuring?
But can we get an estimate? I think so.
Here is my simple mental calculation:
It’s difficult to use bank accounts to estimate our numbers because of the number of unbanked people as well as those who are rejected by banks. The same goes for the census. We know why it cannot be trusted. What else can we use for the estimation? NIN? Nah. What else?
The voter’s card register seems to me a valuable resource for this exercise.
The voter’s card register released by INEC in 2023 states that it has 93 million unique voters in the country.
We know that not every eligible person for voting has registered. Perhaps at least 30% of people who should be on that list are not there. They could not be bothered by politics. Others who are interested have been disenfranchised by the system.
If we add that 30%, which is 27 million, to the 93 million, we have 120 million.
We know that the number of children (18 years and below) outstrips adults in Nigeria. According to all sources I have seen, from 55–60% of those in Nigeria are in the 0–17 age bracket.
That calculation comes to about 140 million kids, below the age of 17.
Adding 120 million adults and 140 million kids brings us to 260 million Nigerians. So, I believed Nigeria is at least 200 million.
But I changed my mind this year.
Unfortunately, the voter’s card registry is not accurate. The register, according to INEC itself this year, has 44.6 percent of voters registered at the last registration window to be either “ghost” or invalid voters. For other election windows, I believe it’s worse than 45%. We have cases of double or multiple registrations, underaged persons, and a high number of dead persons.
So, let’s start all over.
Valid voters on the register = 42 million (I removed 45% of voters from the registry)
Adults who don’t care to register = 12 million
Total Adults in Nigeria = 54 million
Children in Nigeria (55% of the population) = 66 million
Total Adults and Children in Nigeria = 120 million.
Verdict: Nigeria is not more than 150 million. We are closer to 100 million.
