The last Nigerian censuses that gathered data on religious affiliation were those conducted in
1952 and 1963. The country was then divided for administrative purposes into regions, provinces,
and divisions, with further subdivisions into districts and Native Authorities. The smallest units
for which data on religious affiliation are given in the census reports are the divisions. The very
limited purpose of this paper is to present the 1952 and 1963 census data on population by
religion within Nigeria’s then divisions (of which there were 95 in 1952 and 94 in 1963), as data
on the 1952 and 1963 populations of Nigeria’s present 36 states. In short, the old divisions and
the census data associated with them, have been allocated to the present states as nearly as may
be. The detailed results of the exercise, organized by the former Northern, Western, and Eastern
Regions, are given in Tables E-G, in section 5 below. The resulting percentages by religion, of
the 1952 and 1963 populations of Nigeria’s present states, extracted from Tables E-G, are
summarized in Tables A-C, section 3 below. Section 2 briefly discusses the data and some of the
problems the analysis presented. Section 4 aggregates the regional data to yield Table D, showing
percentages by religion for the whole country in 1952 and 1963.