The CIA Factbook has the following religious breakout for Nigeria - 50% Muslim, 40% Christian, 10% animist. Here’s a question - assuming a significant amount of sectarian voting and a clean election, how did a Christian candidate win against a Muslim candidate?
So Iraq hasn’t taught you that the CIA can be very wrong in it’s estimates? The Pew forum puts the percentages at 50% each, the election results show that the Pew forum figures are more accurate than the CIA figures.
The British rigged census results in the 1950’s to favour the far North (Muslims) because the Brits had an excellent working relationship with Muslim Emirs and Sultans (just like they do with Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain). The rigged census results are still used today as the basis for determining the religious composition of Nigeria.
The last census was held in 2006 and the far North fought tooth and nail to prevent putting questions on religious affiliation on census forms. If the Muslim far North was so confident about their numerical superiority, why did they object to counting the number of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria?
Secondly, Muslims in Southern Nigeria (a minority) are much less likely to be as fundamentalist as Muslim in the Sharia states of the far North. In Southern Nigeria, it is common to see families in which one parent is Muslim and another Christian and in which the children decide which religion to follow. On the balance, the more educated and progressive the offspring, the more likely they are to adopt Christianity.
The real revelation of the election results is that Nigeria has a Christian majority. Neither the British nor the American governments will openly admit that for obvious reasons.