Nigeria spends millions of dollars on each national census

  • Nigeria spent $6 million on its first post-independence census in 1962.
  • There is no publicly available data on the amount spent during the 1991 census.
  • By 2006, census spending had surged to $266 million, highlighting a significant increase in the cost of national population counts.
  • The budget for the upcoming 2025 census has not yet been disclosed.
  • In April 2025, President Tinubu inaugurated the National Census Committee and gave a three-week deadline to submit a detailed report.

Census spending in Nigeria has increased since the country’s early years of independence , from just $6.2 million in 1962 to hundreds of millions in the early 2000s. While there is no public data for the 1991 census expenditure, the overall trend shows a growing investment in national data collection efforts. As the country awaits the exact budget for the upcoming 2025 census report, President Tinubu has formed a new Census Committee and given it a three-week deadline to deliver the report. With nearly two decades since the last census in 2006, this national exercise is critical for updating demographic and socio-economic data.

Source:

Population Reference Bureau, QZ

Period:

1962, 1991, 2006
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