A tweet by Elon Musk comparing Nigeria’s birth numbers to the European Union has drawn sharp responses from Nigerians online, with critics questioning the accuracy of the figures rather than the point behind them.

Musk wrote on X on Friday, July 31, that “Nigeria alone had 4 million more births than the entire EU last year.” He linked the claim to a conversation with his AI chatbot Grok, which put Nigeria’s 2025 births at roughly 7.5 to 7.8 million, against about 3.5 million across the 27-member EU.

The post built on a week of similar messages from Musk. On July 30, he noted that 21 of the EU’s 27 countries now record more deaths than births. He later wrote that these countries are “far along the road to extinction.”

The reaction inside Nigeria centered less on whether the country’s population is growing and more on where Grok got its number. Nigeria has not held a census since 2006, and several Nigerians pointed to that gap directly.

Retired journalist Kemi Olunloyo, who covered the 2006 exercise, wrote that Grok “pulled this out of nowhere,” adding that the country’s population figure remains an estimate near 200 million and that five administrations have avoided ordering a new census in twenty years.

Journalist Izu Onyejegbu made a similar point on X, writing that the figure is “highly disputable because it is not based on facts and data,” though he added that Nigeria should still see itself as “a Giant” regardless of the exact count.

Other X users treated the post as an opening for commentary on Nigeria’s own problems. A user wrote that any comparison of birth rates should be matched with a comparison of death rates “so you can see who is actually multiplying.” Another user wrote that many of the children behind the birth numbers are born into poverty and go without adequate medical care.

Two hours after her son’s post, Maye Musk, a model and dietitian, replied with her own message rather than a comment on Nigeria specifically.

She wrote that it is “so sad that many people won’t celebrate their 90th birthday with children, grandchildren and great grandchildren,” recalling that her own mother did. She described her family’s early years, including a first grandchild who slept in an apple box because her parents could not afford a crib, and her own experience raising a baby in a small apartment without money for restaurants. She closed the post with a direct appeal: “Have children!”

Eurostat figures show the EU recorded 3.46 million births against 4.81 million deaths in 2025, a natural population decline of 1.35 million that leaves migration as the bloc’s only source of growth. The EU’s fertility rate stood at 1.34 births per woman in 2024, with Italy and Spain among the countries furthest below the replacement rate of about 2.1.

Nigeria’s figures rest on projections rather than a direct count. The country’s National Population Commission last released census results in March 2006, when the provisional national total stood at 140,003,542.

That count was disputed at the time, with then Lagos state governor Bola Tinubu calling for a recount and civil society groups in the south rejecting the regional breakdown. Current population estimates near 230 to 250 million are drawn from growth models built on that 2006 base, not from a fresh enumeration.