Deaths, delays and disruptions mar national census

At least 10 people have died as Nigeria’s first census in 15 years takes place this week amid violence, delays and disruptions across the country. Several people were killed in clashes between the police and the separatist Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) in the southeast town of Onitsha, Information Minister Frank Nweke said on Wednesday. In the run-up to the census, MASSOB – which claims to fight for the rights of the Igbo ethnic group – protested and vowed to disrupt the process, saying it was unfair that the counting would not take ethnicity into account. Nweke said some MASSOB members had attacked a police station in Onitsha on the first day of the exercise on Tuesday. “The MASSOB members … actually took two policemen hostage and in the ensuing exchange of gunfire eight of these deviants were gunned down,” Nweke told reporters in Abuja. He said a similar attack by the group on a police station in Nnewi town, near Onitsha, was repulsed by the police. One person was killed in the clashes in Nnewi, residents said. Another census official drowned in a boat accident in northern Kano state, bringing the toll to at least 10 in incidents linked to the census. Members of MASSOB, which is campaigning for an independent country in areas dominated by ethnic Igbos (one of Nigeria’s three biggest ethnic groups), on Wednesday abducted two census officials in the southeastern city of Aba but later freed them. Supporters of the group also attacked census officials in the city of Enugu and the smaller town of Ihiala, according to residents. In many other parts of the country there were delays caused by non-payment to census officials and inadequate materials. In the northern city of Kano more than 400 census workers held the chairman of the Fagge local government council hostage for several hours on Wednesday as they demanded payment of allowances. The workers insisted the counting exercise would not begin unless they were paid. According to the National Population Commission some 400 trained officials walked off the job in southern Rivers state after collecting their allowances. Meanwhile the streets of Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city and commercial capital, remained deserted for the third day as people remained at home waiting to be counted. There were widespread complaints of officials visiting very few homes. “We’ve waited for three days now, our house has not even been numbered not to talk of counting the people inside,” said Lagos resident Joy Osonwa. Under the official schedule, numbering of houses was to have been completed before the official start of the census on Tuesday. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country yet nobody knows exactly how many people live there. Population is a key factor in the allocation of resources among states in the multi-ethnic, oil-rich country divided between a mainly Muslim north and a largely Christian south. Previous headcounts have been mired in controversy with estimates of Nigeria’s population ranging from 126 million to 150 million people. In a bid to dispel fears that the census is anything other than a socio-economic planning tool, questions of ethnicity and religion have been left off the census form. The census comes at a tense time in Nigeria, a country prone to ethnic, religious and political upheaval. Scores of people were killed in religious violence in February and an unprecedented number of oil workers have been kidnapped by militant groups demanding a greater share of the oil wealth for their impoverished villages that sit above the crude deposits in the Niger Delta.