The true national population figure must never be politicized by any serious minded nation that desires to experience an effective national planning, tangible progress and visible development in the world of today that is primarily data-oriented and data-driven. Nigeria as a developing nation has never successfully conducted any national population census that is 100% credible, genuinely reliable and truly reflected her true population figures to date. This issue of population in Nigeria since her independence from Britain has remained a big national subject of controversies as well as one of the most divisive national matters in Nigeria to date for two main reasons.
The two reasons are the following:(i). A regionally manipulated or fabricated population figure will automatically makes that geopolitical region of Nigeria to be bigger than the other regions. This can also make the majority religious group and the ethnic group in that particular region with the manipulated population to appear bigger than the other religions and their ethnic nationalities when combined together. This artificially inflated population figures will naturally become the primary and the political instrument for the domineering, marginalization, national politics and winning elections by the cheating region against the other regions.
(ii). The more population a region or a state in Nigeria has, the more money that state or region gets on monthly basis from the federal government of Nigeria. The current national revenue allocation formula in Nigeria is based on these questionable and past census figures that reflect the population size of each state or region of Nigeria. I do not care personally if a dog or a cat is nominated to head the National Population Commission (NPC) of Nigeria by President Jonathan Goodluck provided this population agency will truly conduct a very credible national population census for Nigeria for the first since 1914.
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