Now that Nigeria’s next census date has been officially confirmed, I wonder whether the exercise will reveal a different picture of our population distribution or simply validate the status quo. Anyone who has been a Nigerian long enough knows that the national population is a continuation of the politics of power by another means. Virtually every census in modern Nigeria has been vigorously challenged for its statistical accuracy and, of course, its ideological agenda. Far more than serving the purposes of efficient national planning—the officially touted reasons for holding them—censuses in underdeveloped societies like ours use purported scientific methods to entrench power and allocate resources. They are susceptible to weaponisation by those who will use their supposedly empirical results to justify undue allocation of resources, and therefore they inevitably become contentious.
Given that national legislative seats were historically apportioned—and political offices are still handed out—based on perceived demographic distribution, a credible census in these parts is a unicorn sighting. Our political leaders are over‑invested in maintaining the official population figures in all their skewed ingloriousness. Like our periodic elections, where those already favoured rig the process to pre‑empt their opponents’ rigging, census figures are swollen in anticipation of others cooking them too. By the time everyone steals in order not to be stolen from, we end up with a process that undermines us in every way.
For the May 3‑5 census, however, we have been promised a far more credible process because the counting will be digital. On its website, the Nigerian Population Commission boasted that the impending digital census “will change how the census is being conducted in Nigeria before now.” If you are Nigerian, that boast sounds familiar. We have seen how over‑valorised digital techniques can fall short. Technological tools are not magic wands that can be waved over the myriad sociological problems Nigeria faces. They are merely tools in the hands of humans; their effects depend on users’ technical capabilities and ethical judgment. No matter how many dazzling digital toys the NPC has acquired, what will matter at the end of the day is the integrity of the agency. As poet Amiri Baraka once noted, “machines have the morality of their inventors.” Technology is never neutral, even if it appears mindless. Algorithms and their outcomes are inseparable from the passions of the humans who wrote the code. For nations like Nigeria, which do not invent technology but mostly use what others have built, the tools reproduce the ethic of our society’s incompetence. This is why digitised processes that work seamlessly elsewhere—cashless transactions, digitised public records, basic bureaucratic procedures—have been as hard to implement in Nigeria as pulling a tree trunk.
The recent elections illustrate this point. Despite the Independent National Electoral Commission’s fanfare around the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System as a revolutionary device, its game‑changing capacity ultimately bowed before legendary Nigerian incompetence. The election was costly but lacked credibility. Machines cannot redeem an amoral society. The NPC can boast that its digital tools are a game changer, but only institutional integrity can prevent the reproduction of the same lopsided figures Nigeria has brandished for decades.
If there is anything the serially paltry voter turnout at our elections has shown, it is the deceptiveness of the figures touted as the Nigerian population. On several population clocks, Nigeria is listed as having over 200 million people. This misattribution stems partly from official dishonesty and partly from our society’s numeric illiteracy. A recent example compounds both issues: Communications and Digital Economy Minister (and alleged professor of cybersecurity) Isa Pantami claimed that 12 988 978 million cyber‑attacks were recorded on cyber facilities during the election. For an election where 25 million people supposedly voted, Pantami’s figures are strange. He also claimed that on February 25 alone, about 6 997 277 threats were recorded—numbers presented with an unnerving precision rather than rounded figures. On average, for every two votes cast during that presidential election, there was at least one cyber threat. No reasonable organisation would stand by recording relentless threats without launching a counter‑offensive, yet Pantami presented these numbers as findings of an inaugurated committee. Such official deception, combined with an inability to comprehend the significance of numbers, explains our failures to count—and account—for ourselves as a society.
Will the NPC do any better, or will we merely use digital tools to entrench lies? The February presidential election, which saw people leaving their houses early to queue, produced a paltry turnout of about 25 million (before adjusting for reported electoral malpractices). Besides the electoral turnout figures, only 95 million people—up to January—have registered for the National Identification Number (NIN), a figure that captures all age ranges. The NIN registration graph shows that numbers have peaked; there are no additional 95 million or more people still awaiting registration. Those who insist that some 120 million people are not captured in the national database should consider the number of active phone lines in the country. The most recent figures show around 222 million active phone lines. In a country where most people have at least two lines, it is clear that no large section of undocumented Nigerians is waiting to emerge from rural areas. We are not that many; what we see is what exists.
Finally, more than a one‑time exercise, I hope to see the Nigerian state put the findings to judicious use. That means the processes will need to be sustained, especially if the findings do not corroborate official narratives. Without constantly updating the NPC database to reflect birth and death rates, the whole exercise might as well be pointless. Equally, a credible census could infuse credibility into related social processes. If the NPC database is synced with other collated ones—such as INEC’s voter register, the NIN, and the BVN—they could provide a better audit of the national population. This could help eliminate endemic electoral corruption like under‑age voting and multiple voting, and enable more efficient surveillance systems. Overall, there are potential gains if the NPC can pull off a credible census. They have acquired the machines; the question is whether they have the integrity to make them work efficiently. What will Nigeria’s digital census find?
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