Nigeria immigration statistics for 2015 was 1,199,115, a 30.32% increase from 2010.

<ul style='margin-top:20px;'>

<li>Nigeria immigration statistics for 2010 was <strong>920,118</strong>, a <strong>41.99% increase</strong> from 2005.</li>
<li>Nigeria immigration statistics for 2005 was <strong>648,019</strong>, a <strong>32.82% increase</strong> from 2000.</li>
<li>Nigeria immigration statistics for 2000 was <strong>487,882</strong>, a <strong>5.37% increase</strong> from 1995.</li>
</ul>International migrant stock is the number of people born in a country other than that in which they live. It also includes refugees. The data used to estimate the international migrant stock at a particular time are obtained mainly from population censuses. The estimates are derived from the data on foreign-born population--people who have residence in one country but were born in another country. When data on the foreign-born population are not available, data on foreign population--that is, people who are citizens of a country other than the country in which they reside--are used as estimates. After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 people living in one of the newly independent countries who were born in another were classified as international migrants. Estimates of migrant stock in the newly independent states from 1990 on are based on the 1989 census of the Soviet Union. For countries with information on the international migrant stock for at least two points in time, interpolation or extrapolation was used to estimate the international migrant stock on July 1 of the reference years. For countries with only one observation, estimates for the reference years were derived using rates of change in the migrant stock in the years preceding or following the single observation available. A model was used to estimate migrants for countries that had no data.

South Africa had the highest number of immigrants among all African countries as of July 2020, hosting *** million people. Côte d'Ivoire followed with *** million international migrants. Among the macro-regions, Eastern Africa hosted the highest number of international migrants in Africa, with **** million. Western Africa followed with some **** million migrants.

Netherlands Number of Immigrants: Nigeria data was reported at 602.000 Person in 2017. This records an increase from the previous number of 457.000 Person for 2016. Netherlands Number of Immigrants: Nigeria data is updated yearly, averaging 528.000 Person from Dec 1995 (Median) to 2017, with 23 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 695.000 Person in 2009 and a record low of 235.000 Person in 1995. Netherlands Number of Immigrants: Nigeria data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Statistics Netherlands. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Netherlands – Table NL.G005: Number of Immigrants: by Country.

Historical chart and dataset showing Nigeria net migration by year from 1960 to 2024.

Nigeria NG: International Migrant Stock: % of Population data was reported at 0.658 % in 2015. This records an increase from the previous number of 0.577 % for 2010. Nigeria NG: International Migrant Stock: % of Population data is updated yearly, averaging 0.471 % from Dec 1990 (Median) to 2015, with 6 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 0.658 % in 2015 and a record low of 0.397 % in 2000. Nigeria NG: International Migrant Stock: % of Population data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Nigeria – Table NG.World Bank.WDI: Population and Urbanization Statistics. International migrant stock is the number of people born in a country other than that in which they live. It also includes refugees. The data used to estimate the international migrant stock at a particular time are obtained mainly from population censuses. The estimates are derived from the data on foreign-born population--people who have residence in one country but were born in another country. When data on the foreign-born population are not available, data on foreign population--that is, people who are citizens of a country other than the country in which they reside--are used as estimates. After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 people living in one of the newly independent countries who were born in another were classified as international migrants. Estimates of migrant stock in the newly independent states from 1990 on are based on the 1989 census of the Soviet Union. For countries with information on the international migrant stock for at least two points in time, interpolation or extrapolation was used to estimate the international migrant stock on July 1 of the reference years. For countries with only one observation, estimates for the reference years were derived using rates of change in the migrant stock in the years preceding or following the single observation available. A model was used to estimate migrants for countries that had no data.; ; United Nations Population Division, Trends in Total Migrant Stock: 2008 Revision.; Weighted average;

As of 2020, international migrants in West Africa added up to nearly 7.6 million people, covering 1.9 percent of the total population of the region. The share of migrants was highest in Côte d’Ivoire, where foreign citizens and the foreign-born population constituted 9.7 percent of its inhabitants. On the other hand, Nigeria was the country in the westernmost part of the continent with the lowest count of foreign citizens, including refugees and asylum seekers.

Survey research on migrants is notoriously challenging, especially if the goal is to collect data across a range of countries. Social-networking sites’ ability to micro-target advertisements to migrant communities combined with their near-global reach makes them an attractive option. Yet there is little rigorous evaluation of the quality of data thus collected – especially for populations from developing countries. We compare samples of Nigerian emigrants in Canada and Italy and Nigerians (at home) in Nigeria recruited through targeted advertising on Facebook and Instagram to population estimates. We find our samples contain varying degrees of bias in the case age and gender, and systematically miss those with little formal education. How much this affects our samples’ representativeness varies across contexts: discrepancies are much smaller for emigrant populations in Canada than in Italy and much larger in Nigeria, where a large share of the population has little formal education and limited literacy. Post-stratifying each sample on age, gender, and education does not ameliorate bias on other variables such as ethnicity, religion, period of migration, or political attitudes. We discuss the potential and limitations of social-media driven sampling and highlight key considerations for implementing it to collect multi-sited data on migrants. For Peer Review

Nigeria NG: Net Migration data was reported at -300,000.000 Person in 2017. This stayed constant from the previous number of -300,000.000 Person for 2012. Nigeria NG: Net Migration data is updated yearly, averaging -95,398.000 Person from Dec 1962 (Median) to 2017, with 12 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 854,649.000 Person in 1977 and a record low of -671,640.000 Person in 1982. Nigeria NG: Net Migration data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Nigeria – Table NG.World Bank.WDI: Population and Urbanization Statistics. Net migration is the net total of migrants during the period, that is, the total number of immigrants less the annual number of emigrants, including both citizens and noncitizens. Data are five-year estimates.; ; United Nations Population Division. World Population Prospects: 2017 Revision.; Sum;

The most common country of origin of refugees in Nigeria is Cameroon. As of August 2021, about 67 thousand refugees in Nigeria came from this country. Cameroonians flee from violence ongoing between security forces and armed groups. In the last three years, the number of refugees from Cameroon arriving in Nigeria has increased considerably.

Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria

With almost two thousand kilometers in length, Cameroon's longest border is with Nigeria. The majority of Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria are in the states of Cross River, Benue, and Taraba, the states at the borders with Cameroon. The territories the two countries are also highly impacted by the terrorism of Boko Haram. The violence in this region continues to push people out of their homes and seek safety in neighboring countries.

Deadly migration routes

The migration routes taken by African migrants are among the deadliest in the world. In the attempt to reach other African or European countries, more than ten thousand migrants lost their lives on the African continent between 2014 and 2021. Some of the most dangerous routes include the West African Atlantic route, from West Africa to the Canary Islands, and the Mediterranean routes, from North Africa to South Europe. The latter registers the highest number in the word of deaths and missing people who try to migrate.

Norway Emigration: Africa: Nigeria data was reported at 5.000 Person in 2017. This records a decrease from the previous number of 11.000 Person for 2016. Norway Emigration: Africa: Nigeria data is updated yearly, averaging 26.000 Person from Dec 1967 (Median) to 2017, with 51 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 50.000 Person in 1994 and a record low of 0.000 Person in 1967. Norway Emigration: Africa: Nigeria data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Statistics Norway. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Norway – Table NO.G007: Emigration: by Country.

Geographic coverage

National

Analysis unit

• Household
• Individual

Universe

18 of the 37 states in Nigeria were selected using procedures described in the methodology report

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

A. Sampling Frame The sampling frame was the 2006 National Population Census. For administrative purposes, Nigeria has 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. These states are grouped into six geopolitical zones - the North Central, North East, North West, South East, South South and South West. The states in turn are divided into 776 Local Governments. The demographic and political characteristics of the states vary considerably. For example, the number of component local government areas in the states ranges from 8 in Bayelsa State (in the South South) to 44 in Kano State (in the North West). Likewise state populations vary widely from 1.41 million in the Abuja Federal Capital Territory to 9.38 million in Kano State. The National Bureau of Statistics splits the country further into 23, 070 enumeration areas (EAs). While the enumeration areas are equally distributed across the local government areas, with each local government area having 30 enumeration areas, the differences in the number of local government areas across states implies that there are also huge differences in the number of enumeration areas across states. Appendix table 1 summarizes the population according to the 2006 population census (in absolute and proportionate numbers), number of local government areas, and number of enumeration areas in each state .

Given the above, a stratified random sampling technique was thought to be needed to select areas according to population and the expected prevalence of migrants. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) provided a randomly selected set of enumeration areas and households spread across all states in the Federation from the 2006 sampling frame. Every state in Nigeria has three senatorial zones (often referred to as North, Central and South or East, Central and West). The NBS sample enumeration areas were distributed such that within each state, local government areas from each senatorial zones were included in the sample, with Local Governments in each state nearly evenly distributed between rural and urban areas. In all, a total of 3188 enumeration areas were selected. These enumeration areas were unevenly spread across States; some states in the North West (Kano, Katsina, and Jigawa), and a few in the South South (Akwa Ibom and Delta) had over 100 enumeration areas selected while others such as Imo and Abia in the South East, and Borno, Gombe and Taraba in the North East, had as few as 20 enumeration areas selected. This selection partially reflected the relative population distribution and number of Local Government Areas in the component states. Annex Table B shows details of the states and geopolitical regions, their shares in population of the country, the number of Local Government Areas and enumeration areas in each state and the number of enumeration areas given in the NBS list that formed the frame for the study.

B. The Sample for the Migration Survey

a. Sample Selection of States, Local Governments and Enumeration Areas Originally, the intention was to have proportionate allocation across all states, using the population of each state in the 2006 Census to select the number of households to be included in the sample. But it was later recognized that this would not yield enough migrant households, particularly those with international migrants, especially as the total number of households that could likely be covered in the sample to was limited to 2000. Consequently, a disproportionate sampling approach was adopted, with the aim of oversampling areas of the country with more migrants. According to Bilsborrow (2006), this approach becomes necessary because migrants are rare populations for which a distinct disproportionate sampling procedure is needed to ensure they are adequately captured. Given the relative rareness of households with out-migrants to international destinations within the 10 year reference period (selected by the World Bank for all countries) prior to the planned survey, sampling methods appropriate for sampling rare elements were desirable, specifically, stratified sampling with two-phase sampling at the last stage.

Establishing the strata would require that there be previous work, say from the most recent Census, to determine migration incidence among the states. However, the needed census data could not be obtained from either the National Bureau of Statistics or the National Population Commission. Therefore, the stratification procedure had to rely on available literature, particularly Hernandez-Coss and Bun (2007), Agu (2009) and a few other recent, smaller studies on migration and remittances in Nigeria. Information from this literature was supplemented by expert judgement about migration from team members who had worked on economic surveys in Nigeria in the past. Information from the literature and the expert assessment indicated that migration from households is considerably higher in the South than in the North. Following this understanding, the states were formed into two strata- those with high and those with low incidence of migration. In all, 18 States (16 in the South and 2 in the North) were put into the high migration incidence stratum while 19 states (18 in the North and 1 in the South) were classified l into the low migration incidence stratum (column C of Appendix Table 1).

The Aggregate population of the 18 states in the high migration incidence stratum was 67.04 million, spread across 10,850 Enumeration areas. Thus, the mean population of an EA in the high migration stratum was 6179. In turn, the aggregate population of the 19 states in the low migration incidence stratum was 72.95 million spread across 12,110 EAs yielding a mean EA population of 6024. These numbers were close enough to assume the mean population of EAs was essentially the same. To oversample states in the high stratum, it was decided to select twice as high a proportion of the states as in the low stratum. To further concentrate the sample and make field work more efficient in being oriented to EAs more likely to have international migrants, we decided to select randomly twice as many LGAs in each state in the high stratum states as in the low stratum states.

Thus, 12 states were randomly selected with probabilities of selection proportionate to the population size of each state (so states with larger populations were accordingly more likely to fall in the sample) from the high stratum states. Then two LGAs were randomly selected from each sample state and 2 EAs per sample LGA (one urban, one rural) to yield a total of 12 x 2 x 2 or 48 EAs in the high stratum states. For the low stratum, 6 states were randomly selected. From each of these, 1 LGA was randomly picked and 2 EAs were selected per sample LGA to give a total of 6 x 1 x 2 or 12 EAs in the low stratum. This yielded a total of 60 EAs for both strata. Given the expected range of 2000 households to be sampled, approximately 67 households were to be sampled from each local government area or 34 households from each enumeration area.

So far, the discussion has assumed two groups of households - migrant and non-migrant households. However, the study was interested in not just lumping all migrants together, but rather in classifying migrants according to whether their destination was within or outside the country. Migrant households were thus subdivided into those with former household members who were international migrants and those with former household members who were internal migrants. Three strata of households were therefore required, namely:

1. Households with an international migrant: at least one person who was a member of the household since Jan. 1, 2000 left to live in an international destination and has remained abroad;
2. Households with an internal migrant: at least one person who was a member of the household since Jan. 1, 2000 left to live elsewhere in Nigeria (outside the sample LGA) and has not returned to the LGA; and
3. Households with no migrant: No member of the household has left to live elsewhere either within or outside the country since Jan. 1, 2000.

The selection of states to be included in the sample from both strata was based on Probabilities of Selection Proportional to (Estimated) Size or PPES. The population in each stratum was cumulated and systematic sampling was performed, with an interval of 12.16 million for the low stratum (72.95 million divided by 6 States), and 5.59 million for the high stratum (67.04 million divided by 12 States). This yields approximately double the rate of sampling in the high migration stratum, as earlier explained. Using a random start between 0 and 12.16, the following states were sampled in the low stratum: Niger, Bauchi, Yobe, Kano, Katsina, and Zamfara. In the high stratum, states sampled were Abia, Ebonyi, Imo, Akwa Ibom, Delta, Edo, Rivers, Lagos, Ondo, Osun and Oyo. Given its large population size, Lagos fell into the sample twice. The final sample, with LGAs and EAs moving from North to South (i.e. from the low to the high stratum states) is presented in Table 1 below.

The sample was concentrated in the South since that is where it was expected that more households have international migrants. It was expected that the survey would still also be reasonably representative of the whole country and of both internal migrant and non-migrant households through weighting the data. To this effect, field teams were asked to keep careful track at all stages of the numbers of people and households listed compared to the number in the

Norway Immigration: Africa: Nigeria data was reported at 95.000 Person in 2017. This records an increase from the previous number of 93.000 Person for 2016. Norway Immigration: Africa: Nigeria data is updated yearly, averaging 46.000 Person from Dec 1967 (Median) to 2017, with 51 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 164.000 Person in 2011 and a record low of 0.000 Person in 1967. Norway Immigration: Africa: Nigeria data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Statistics Norway. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Norway – Table NO.G006: Immigration: by Country.

In 2019, Nigeria received 19.6 thousand asylum applications and accepted 19.4 thousand. Among Cameroon applicants, over 19 thousand received a positive answer. That year, Cameroon represented by far the most frequent country of origin of asylum applicants.

As of 2019, Nigeria was the leading destination for Ghanaian emigrants, possibly facilitated by the 1979 ECOWAS Protocol on the free movement of citizens of member states. The country hosted a little over 233 thousand Ghanaians in the said year, equaling around one in four emigrants from Ghana. Ranking second and third globally were the United States and the United Kingdom, with nearly 174 thousand and 141 thousand emigrants from Ghana, respectively. Overall, in 2019, the number of Ghanaians who had emigrated reached an approximate total of 970.63 thousand.

In 2020, 0.6 percent of the Nigeria population consisted of migrated population. In 1990, about 0.5 percent the country’s inhabitants were migrants. Nigeria has the largest population in Africa, with some 206 million people as of 2020.

Netherlands Number of Emigrants: Nigeria data was reported at 451.000 Person in 2017. This records a decrease from the previous number of 467.000 Person for 2016. Netherlands Number of Emigrants: Nigeria data is updated yearly, averaging 345.000 Person from Dec 1995 (Median) to 2017, with 23 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 499.000 Person in 2012 and a record low of 192.000 Person in 1999. Netherlands Number of Emigrants: Nigeria data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Statistics Netherlands. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Netherlands – Table NL.G004: Number of Emigrants: by Country.

Sweden Number of Immigrants: Female: Nigeria data was reported at 143.000 Person in 2017. This records an increase from the previous number of 142.000 Person for 2016. Sweden Number of Immigrants: Female: Nigeria data is updated yearly, averaging 122.500 Person from Dec 2000 (Median) to 2017, with 18 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 164.000 Person in 2014 and a record low of 14.000 Person in 2000. Sweden Number of Immigrants: Female: Nigeria data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Statistics Sweden. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Sweden – Table SE.G009: Number of Immigrants: by Sex and Country.

United States Immigrants Admitted: Nigeria data was reported at 14,380.000 Person in 2016. This records an increase from the previous number of 11,542.000 Person for 2015. United States Immigrants Admitted: Nigeria data is updated yearly, averaging 8,253.000 Person from Sep 1986 (Median) to 2016, with 31 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 15,253.000 Person in 2009 and a record low of 2,976.000 Person in 1986. United States Immigrants Admitted: Nigeria data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by US Department of Homeland Security. The data is categorized under Global Database’s USA – Table US.G086: Immigration.

In 2021, the migration rate in Nigeria stood at -0.29 per 1,000 population. This means that the number of people leaving Nigeria is slightly higher than that of those entering the country. Between 2000 and 2021, the migration balance stayed negative.