Nigeria: Population Boom In Economic Doom

By Jerry Uwah

Nigeria is sitting on a ticking population time-bomb. President Muhammadu Buhari passively acknowledged the danger ahead in his incoherent and inchoate broadcast on Democracy Day when he listed “galloping population growth rate” as one of the reasons why government could not provide jobs for Nigeria’s army of restless youth now being recruited into armed robberies, kidnappings, banditries and bare-faced terrorism. 

Ironically, the president was curiously silent on how to tackle the dangerous population growth that is now partially responsible for the breakdown of law and order in the land. The population time-bomb has started exploding. It is partially responsible for the obdurate security crisis that has placed Nigeria on civil war footing. 

Nigeria probably has the highest number of children of school age out of classrooms because of the population boom in economic doom that makes it impossible for government to provide enough classrooms for the millions of children qualifying for seats in primary and secondary schools. 

Nigeria has 13.5 million children of school age outside classrooms. Millions of the unskilled illiterates thrown on the system by the dearth of classrooms are now eking out a living through banditry and kidnappings. 

At the current annual population growth rate of 2.6 percent, Nigeria would have close to 250 million mouths to feed by 2030. By 2050, Nigeria’s population will be larger than that of the United States of America. The U.S has a population of 332 million while Nigeria’s current population stands at 207 million. By 2050 Nigeria would probably have the world’s fourth largest population. 

Nigeria’s population was a scant 55 million in 1963. By 1973 it surged to 81 million. In the last 48 years it has more than doubled. That is a sharp contrast with the development in advanced economies like Germany and Japan. The population of Germany was 60 million in 1939. Some 82 years down the line, the population of Germany, the world’s fourth largest economy, has only inched up to 82 million. It has not doubled in more than 80 years. 

Many see Nigeria’s population boom as a huge economic incentive. They contend that it provides a huge market that no foreign investor can easily ignore. But foreign investors are interested in population that can back up demand with purchasing power. Ironically, a huge chunk of Nigeria’s population has no purchasing power. 

Besides, decaying infrastructure, obdurate security crisis and endemic corruption has compelled foreign investors to ignore Nigeria’s population boom. Twitter sited its first African office in little and insignificant Ghana even as its largest market in the continent is in Nigeria. 

In a population of 207 million, more than 122 million live below poverty line. Nigeria’s population boom is a ticking time-bomb because it is growing faster than economic and infrastructure developments. Last year the economy receded by 1.5 per cent but the population growth remained at 2.6 percent. 

The golden rule is that the economy must grow at twice the rate of population to provide adequate infrastructure for the new arrivals. Germany’s population is less than half of Nigeria’s, but foreign investors flock there because the population is highly empowered financially. 

Nigeria’s alarming population growth rate has encumbered the country with excruciating infrastructure deficits. Zamfara state has less than 50 doctors in government pay roll for a population of 5 million. In Bauchi state, women in labour in some rural communities are ferried on the back of donkeys to the nearest maternity which could be 30 kilometers away. Some die before medical assistance could reach them. All these happen because population growth far out-pace economic growth. Corruption and mismanagement only worsens a bad situation. 

The infrastructure deficit is palpable everywhere in the economy. Nigeria has a housing deficit of 17 million units. That translates to millions of households residing under bridges or uncompleted buildings. 

That is the direct consequence of a population growing faster than the economy. The danger with Nigeria’s galloping population growth rate is that if it is not checked in time, we might end up with the so-called China syndrome. 

After the Long March that established communism in China on October 1, 1949, China ignored a dangerous baby boom for decades probably because the rulers thought they needed the massive population to fend off threats from capitalism. 

By the 1970s China’s population had crossed the 1 billion mark and Chu En Lai, China’s then prime minister told Edward Heath, Britain’s visiting prime minister that he had 1 billion people on top of Britain’s 60 million people and that with such population explosion it was extremely difficult to conduct elections which is the basic requirement of democracy. 

The Chinese slammed the brakes on population growth and decreed that no couple should have more than one child. The one-child decree was strictly enforced for about 40 years until last month when a national census exposed the fact that China was encumbered with an ageing population where 20 percent are 65 years and above. In Nigeria, a scant six per cent of the population is 65 and above. 

China’s working population may be less than those on pension. That automatically decrees low productivity and a burdensome pension bill. The tyrant ruling China responded to the ageing population by revoking the one-child decree and ordering couples to have a maximum of three children. 

The truth is that China would have problems reversing its ageing population because the cost of raising babies in the country is very high and couples had adjusted to the one-child syndrome in a way that might take years to revert. 

The lessons the federal government can learn from the China syndrome is that it is dangerous to wait for population explosion before slamming the brakes. Population control is best at the modest stage. 

The federal government should enact a population control policy that would peg a woman’s fertility rate at a maximum of three children. Nigeria’s fertility rate is 5.3 births per woman. That is a far cry from the world’s average of 2.5 births per woman. In the developed world, couples see child bearing as a very heavy burden that inhibits their freedom and reduces the standard of living. 

Consequently, they voluntarily reduce the number of children they bear without any urging from government. That is in a system where the social security provides for everyone during the dusk of life. 

Nigeria has no social security system. Nigerians in ignorance raise many children because they expect their children to provide for them during old age. The federal government can persuade Nigerians to abandon the failed extended family system by providing social security for everyone from 70 and above. 

The galloping population growth rate is also fueled by the reality that some of the children would die before age five. 

An improved healthcare delivery system that overcomes that fear would encourage couples to raise a maximum of three children with the conviction that they would almost certainly survive their parents. 

Nigeria’s entrenched polygamy system is another factor in the galloping population growth rate. In most parts of the country, men feel they are entitled to as many wives as they could cater for. 

In northern Nigeria, many believe that it is religiously mandatory to marry four wives. Each of the four wives produce a minimum of six children, thus leaving an impoverished polygamist with 24 children. 

The boys among the 24 are thrown into the street at the mercy of clerics who train them to recite the Qur’an. They all graduate from the Al-majiri schools as unskilled illiterates. About 90 per cent of the graduates of the Al-majiri schools are the bandits and kidnappers plaguing Niger, Katsina, Zamfara and Kaduna states today. 

No one can comfortably legislate against polygamy in Nigeria because the women are the first line of defence against such law. 

Even as the 2006 census suggested that there are more men in Nigeria than women, northern women still believe that some women would not find husbands if every man is restricted to one wife. 

Government can allow the Solomons of this world to marry as many wives as they want. However, the women in polygamous homes should be restricted to a maximum of two children per woman. 

The population growth rate has assumed spiraling proportions. If it is not checked, the rich in society might soon have to migrate to Europe and north America to enjoy their wealth. With population boom in economic doom, Nigeria would be just too hot for them. 

*Uwah is a commentator on public issues