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The United Nations Population Fund's (UNFPA) Assistant Representative in Nigeria, Osaretin Adonri, has said the Nigerian population figures are speculative, projected and not accurate. Adonri also told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the country is long overdue for a census, which would dismiss the catalogue of speculative population figures.

“Nigeria needs a census for population accuracy and effective planning,” Adonri said. According to the UNFPA 2019 State of the World Population report, Nigeria’s population has increased to 201 million, having grown at average rate of 2.6 per cent from 2010 to 2019.

Adonri, who served as a project manager at the National Population Commission (NPopC) between 1998 and 2000, expressed confidence in the ability of the agency to conduct an all-inclusive census. He added that every area would be counted in future census and issues of over-counting and under-counting would be taken care of with the Enumeration Area Demarcation (EAD), which the commission has already started since 2018.

The EAD is the process of dividing the country into smaller units for easy coverage by enumerators during a population census. The UNFPA Assistant Representative, also, noted that the population clock is not a reliable indicator to guarantee accurate population figure of any country.

“Population clock is only an electronic projection that is functionally based on programming,” Adonri said. “Population clock cannot give you an accurate population of any country because it is based on projections.”

The 2006 population census conducted by the NPopC puts Nigeria’s population at 140,003,542 while the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) 2012 data estimated Nigeria’s population to be 166.2 million.