Nigeria Census

ABUJA, March 24 (Reuters) - The normally hectic streets and markets of Nigeria's main cities were deserted on Friday with residents ordered to stay at home and be counted as the first census in 15 years entered its final stage.
The restricted movement measures, which last until 1500 GMT on Friday and Saturday, are part of the authorities' strategy to try and ensure that Africa's most populous country gets credible census results after a series of past fiascos.
Lagos, the sprawling, overcrowded commercial capital in the southwest, has been eerily quiet since Tuesday as the Lagos state government ordered a five-day shutdown to increase its chances of having its enormous population counted.
State television showed children playing football and men staging ram fights outside their homes in streets normally crowded with hawkers, cars and buses.
Other major cities had been conducting business as usual, but on Friday they too were like ghost towns. In Kano, the biggest city in the north and a major centre of trade, and in southeastern Onitsha, a huge and frenetic market city, the only people in sight on the streets were police.
In the capital Abuja, even the vendors of newspapers and mobile phone recharge cards who normally crowd every road intersection had vanished. Census takers in their bright orange jackets were slowly making their way down the streets.
Estimates of Nigeria's population range from 120 million to 150 million. The government says the census is designed to provide better data on demographics and housing that will help improve social services.
But censuses are fraught in Nigeria because rival ethnic and religious groups have tried to use them to assert their numerical superiority and claim a larger chunk of oil revenues and political representation. Rows over results have discredited several counts since independence from Britain in 1960.
SEPARATISTS
The worst trouble in this census has occurred in the southeast, where six suspected members of a separatist group were killed on Tuesday in a clash with police after trying to stop people from being counted.
Suspected members of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) have also attacked census takers with machetes and acid. Two of the officials died in hospital of their injuries, state radio reported on Friday.
MASSOB campaigns for the southeast, a region dominated by the Ibo ethnic group, to secede. It argues that the Ibo should not be counted in the Nigerian census as they are Biafrans. The Ibo are Nigeria's third largest ethnic group.
There have been violent incidents in other parts of the country. In southwestern Ondo state, five people were killed just before the start of the census in fighting between two ethnic groups over ownership of a village.
In northern Gombe state, public radio reported that a boundary dispute between two ethnic groups was disrupting the census in part of the state as villagers refused to be counted until the row was settled. Several government buildings were torched by irate local residents.
Elsewhere, problems in paying census takers and a dearth of materials have caused delays and arguments.
Several prominent figures including state governors are calling for the census to be extended beyond Saturday, its scheduled final day, arguing that there have been too many delays and hitches for the count to be completed on time.