/ 22 March 2006

Nigeria census heads into day two amid violence

Nigeria's first national headcount in 15 years headed into a second day on Wednesday amid clashes between police and vigilantes, attacks on counters and protests by disgruntled census workers. Nigeria is recognised as Africa's most populous country but has never conducted an uncontested census.

Nigeria’s first national headcount in 15 years headed into a second day on Wednesday amid clashes between police and vigilantes, attacks on counters and protests by disgruntled census workers.

Nigeria is recognised as Africa’s most populous country but has never conducted an uncontested census, and estimates for its huge and burgeoning population range between 120-million and 160-million.

President Olusegun Obasanjo has made counting the citizenry a priority, insisting it is a vital tool in any development strategy for a country where most live in abject poverty despite the country’s vast oil revenues.

But the exercise has shone a spotlight on the west African giant’s deep ethnic and religious divisions and stirred street violence in a country that has seen 20 000 killed over the past seven years.

Nine people, three policemen and six vigilantes were killed in a shootout on Monday night in the southern Nnewi market town when security forces tried to search a house for suspected Biafran nationalists, according to police.

”We went there looking to find out why they were holding a meeting and they opened fire on us,” a senior Anambra State police officer told Agence France-Presse in the nearby city of Onitsha, speaking on condition of anonymity.

”Three of our men were killed in the crossfire and six were killed on the other side. A lot of people were injured,” he said.

But the Anambra officer stressed that, while officers had approached the house expecting to find a separatist meeting, they had in fact encountered one of the armed vigilante gangs which control the region’s busy markets.

Security forces in Anambra are on high alert after attacks on census counters by suspected members of the banned Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (Massob) which wants a state for ethnic Igbos.

Massob has urged south-east Nigeria’s estimated 40-million Igbo to boycott the Nigerian census in order to assert their ”Biafran identity”.

Between 1967 and 1970 the then state of Biafra fought and lost a disastrous independence war against federal forces.

In Onitsha, census counters said they had refused to go into the field after several of them were attacked by suspected Massob activists.

Five enumerators were treated for burns after being attacked with acid while a census supervisor, Ohida Jimoh, said he was attacked by machete-wielding men on Tuesday afternoon.

”One of them collected all the material I intended distributing to my enumerators,” he said.

The head of the exercise in the unruly city, Emmanuel Nwakile, said: ”We have asked the police to provide security for the enumerators so that their lives will not be in danger.”

Massob spokesperson David Chinedu, however, denied his organisation was involved in the attacks, blaming ”hoodlums and some other vested interests who oppose the holding of the census in Igboland”.

While radical Igbos are threatening to boycott the census, nationwide other interest groups want to maximise their turnout in the census to push their case for a greater share in government funding and political influence.

Previous Nigerian headcounts have always been marred by allegations of inflated figures.

Census-taking was also disrupted for a second day in northern Nigeria after hundreds of counters continued their protests in the city of Kano, saying their wages had not been paid.

However, in many other parts of the country, including rain-drenched commercial capital Lagos, the exercise was slowly getting underway.

”Enumeration has started in earnest. So far I have registered two families but I am afraid this rain may disrupt the exercise,” said Bidemi David, a 24-year-old census counter in the commercial port city. — Sapa-AFP