Summary

• Nigeria's official population (~220-230 million) may be significantly inflated and could be closer to 170 million
• This overcount is likely driven by political and financial incentives for states
• I'm unsure of the implications if this is accurate
  • If states have uniformly inflated populations than the distribution of resources could still be divided evenly
  • Nigeria would still be the biggest country in Africa and companies/governments/NGOs would have similar cost benefit analysis for working and investing there
• This is a very shallow investigation

Why did I bother looking into this?

The below text sparked an investigation into Nigeria's population claims. It was slightly hidden in the 4th section in one of Yaw's excellent Substack posts.

Yaw went onto explain his reasoning for thinking the population was much lower than current estimates.

Nigeria is a large country with no deep shared history among the different tribes. Due [...]

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Outline:

(00:04) Summary

(00:49) Why did I bother looking into this?

(03:20) Other Sources

(09:55) Potential Data Sources

(10:05) National Identification Numbers

(11:46) Tech usage

(12:15) Sim Cards

(14:37) UN Population Estimates and Projections

(18:13) Incentives for not caring

(19:08) International Organisations

(19:42) Private Sector

(20:07) Implications

(20:25) International Standing

(20:45) GDP

(21:04) Development Indicators

(21:34) Domestic Politics

(21:53) International Aid

(22:10) Future Research

(22:15) Nigeria

(23:27) Other Countries

The original text contained 9 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

The original text contained 2 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
November 22nd, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/824rsHCXuqTmBb8se/nigeria-s-missing-50-million-people

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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