Counting delay in Nigeria's Kano

The census officials are counting people in their homes

Counting in Nigeria's first census for 15 years is yet to begin in Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria.

The headcount got off to a slow start in many places on Tuesday, but in Kano enumerators are still demarcating areas by marking houses with chalk.

In the south-east, where Biafran separatists are trying to boycott the census, two people died in a shootout as a police station was set ablaze.

The census is sensitive as funding and representation depend on the results.

Questions of religion and ethnicity have been left out and President Olusegun Obasanjo stressed that the five-day operation is not political and urged people to remain calm.

Nigeria is Africa's most populous country but estimates of its population range from 120 to 150 million.

Building collapse

In the commercial capital, Lagos, people have been ordered to remain as home and correspondents say the streets are eerily quiet.

FACTS AND FIGURES Almost 1m enumerators 42,000 monitors 1991 census: 88.9m people People must stay at home to be counted Questions on ethnicity and religion taken out Send us your comments Census: In pictures Standing up to be counted Counting controversy

This has probably saved lives as the top nine stories of the 21-story bank in the city centre collapsed on Wednesday morning, AP news agency reports.

A fire earlier in the month had gutted two floors of The Nigerian Industrial Development Bank and heavy winds caused the upper part of the building to split in two, the agency says.

Despite the delay in Kano, the BBC's Yusuf Sarki Mohammed says many people are still at home expecting the enumerators, who are still identifying which houses are to be included in the count by marking them with chalk.

Outside the city, counting has got under way, he says.

Meanwhile, a census official is missing in Kano state, feared drowned when a boat carrying enumerators capsized.

Clashes

The violence in south-eastern Anambra state occurred when the banned Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (Massob) clashed with police in the town of Nnewi.

One Massob member and a policemen died in the shootout as a police station and five vehicles were set alight after police broke up a Massob meeting.

The separatists refuse to be counted as they say they do not want to be party to a national project.

The Igbos fought to break away from the rest of Nigeria during a three-year civil war that ended in 1970.

Although the controversial questions about ethnicity and religion have been removed, other key questions include:

• Education background
• Occupation
• Income
• Size of house
• Type of water supply
• Toilet facilities
• Type of fuel used
• Access to radio, television, telephone

Nigeria's Civil Liberties Organisation has deployed some 42,000 people to monitor the enumerators and ensure everything is above board.

Only the last two days of the census have been declared national public holidays, even though people have been urged to stay at home until they are counted.