Continued from Pt 3.
FEATURES
Nigeria’s Imminent Population Explosion
According to data recently made public by Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, no fewer than 83 million Nigerians are currently living in abject poverty. Perhaps the question many policy makers have not been asking is how does Nigeria intend to pull these millions out of poverty with her population still growing astronomically? Surely, something must give way.
Successive governments have been doing their best by employing a wide range of social investments schemes to rescue a good number of Nigerians from the burden of extreme penury, the efforts have so far yielded very little or no tangible results. The truth is that it is so because these leaders have not made it a matter of public policy to discuss population control. No one settles the bill of a drunkard while he or she is still in the bar, and this is something Nigerian leaders have refused or failed to understand.
Nigeria is presently the most populous country in Africa; in fact, analysts have predicted that if nothing is done to check Nigeria’s population and things continue the way they are, chances are bright that she could leapfrog the likes of US to become the third most populous country on the planet in about 31 years only behind India and China. Over the last few decades, the population time bomb has been ticking away non-stop; the burden of these population is already being felt on the economy and scarce social amenities. Population which is supposed to be one of Nigeria’s biggest assets is fast becoming a liability and the policy makers are simply mopping, playing the Ostrich, and ignoring the impending catastrophe which is staring everyone in the face.
One thing each successive Nigerian leader has failed to take cognizance of is that Nigeria’s surging population which on a general scale is largely unproductive is a time bomb, which is already set to be detonated by a highly palpable youth group. The insecurity bedeviling Nigeria now clearly underscores this. If nothing is done to slow down the pace of the population growth, it is nothing but a clear recipe for disaster waiting to happen.
Sometime in 2020, an agency known as the United Nations Funds for Population Activities (UNFPA) released some terrifying statistics on Nigeria’s unrestrained population growth rate which sent shivers down the spines of policy makers in the country. The data tendered by UNFPA revealed that Nigeria’s population was now approximately at 201 million people. More shocking was the fact that while fertility rate among women globally within the period under review dropped drastically to 2.9 children per woman, that of Nigerian women rose to a staggering 5.3 children per woman. For better understanding, what this meant was that the average Nigerian woman now bears more than five children when the global average rate remains at 2.9 children per woman. That was really alarming.
It is even more depressing that the Federal Government does not even consider conducting population census a priority. The last census held in Nigeria was in 2006. Given that it was supposed to hold every ten years, but the President Muhammadu Buhari Led-Government dismissed it citing lack of funds.
Painfully speaking, Nigeria cannot even boast of accurate death and birth registers which are ideally supposed to give economic policy makers a rough estimate of the country’s population and how to effectively plan. Still on the UNFPA data, it shows that life expectancy in Nigeria was just somewhere around an abysmal rate of only 53 years, in fact, according to that data, only three percent of Nigerians end up living above 65 years.
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The truth is that now, Nigeria is already paying the social price of its unchecked population growth. The undeclared ‘revolution’ in the north which is gradually spreading to other parts of the country is a clear pointer. Many people do not know that it is the same unemployed youthful street beggars that have taken refuge in armed banditry, extorting money from rich and middle class. The sad truth is that it can only get worse.
The effect of this lurking disaster could be seen from the number of patients queuing to see an ever-dwindling number of doctors in the few poorly equipped public hospitals Nigeria can boast of. To be succinct, Nigeria has one of the worst doctor-to-patient ratios on the planet.
Nigeria’s almost collapsing educational sector is not even spared. The number of schools available to accommodate Nigeria’s youthful population has become so inadequate that almost 14 million kids are now out of school and now roaming about the streets constituting nuisance.
Out of the 1.8 million candidates who sat for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) this year, only about 500, 000 of them or less would be admitted into the country’s universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education so what would happen to the rest?
The unemployment situation even makes the situation further bleak. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, no fewer than 45 percent of the country’s 70 million youths within productive ages are either unemployed or underemployed — and the truth is that this estimate is largely conservative.
With such stupefying employment statistics, it is not surprising that violent crimes, including armed robberies, kidnappings and other vices are on a steady rise while ethnic tensions have assumed damaging proportions. The truth is that the unchecked population has made the competition for everything more depressing. At this point it is no longer surprising why young Nigerians are leaving for Europe and other parts of the world in record breaking numbers: According to studies, of the 153,000 migrants who managed to move into the European Union through the Italian coast in the year 2015, the largest number — 22,000 — were Nigerians and unfortunately this has since continued to astronomically increase.
Who do we blame?
No matter how one chooses to look at it, a dangerous mix of religious and cultural beliefs fused to mind numbing illiteracy is to be blamed. If Nigeria must check her population, then she must defy every odd to stem the primitive culture of marrying several wives and procreating like insects.
The highly outspoken former Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, had a few years back managed to link polygamy, poverty and terrorism, speaking the painful truth to his fellow Northerners, he said; ‘Those of us in the North have all seen the economic consequences of men who are not capable of maintaining one wife marrying four. They end up producing 20 children, not educating them, leaving them on the streets, and they end up as thugs and terrorists.
There is also a ubiquitous cultural belief, often reinforced by the ‘Africa rising’ notion, that Nigeria draws its strength from its numbers. It is generally believed that a large and growing population is one of the main pillars which Nigeria relies on to retain its self-ordained ‘Giant of Africa’ of Africa status. Analysts believe that this is partly for this reason why Nigerian leaders see family planning campaigns as things that are alien, and they often see them as a conspiracy to weaken her strength. This thinking is no longer helping matters and must be discarded.
Read Also: Population Growth Without Planning Risky For Nigeria — Obaseki
Nigeria is a dangerously religious country where children are widely regarded as ‘blessings from God’ as recorded in the ‘Holy Books’. Human interventions in such ‘Heavenly matters’ are often considered as conceited and presumptuous, hence pushing birth control measures in such places could even be termed blasphemous.
Finally, economic calculations are also one of the major drivers of the desire for many children in Nigeria. In a society where social safety net is non-existent, parents are forced to rely on their children to take care of them in their old age.
Nigerian policy makers must as a matter of urgency consider her astronomically growing population an impending disaster. Time is running out and the danger is closing in.
To be continued..
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK