Somalia held its 1959 election without a census, following India’s and Nigeria’s precedent

Evidence

Toward the end of the conference, a few members proposed that the forthcoming assembly election should be postponed, since the territory lacked the necessary population census for a legitimate election. The new party president and many others opposed the motion because they believed that other former colonies, such as India and Nigeria, had had free and fair elections in the absence of a national census. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 362