Galloping population growth, crawling economy

Nigeria is sitting on a ticking population time-bomb. President Muhammadu Buhari passively acknowledged the danger ahead in his broadcast on Democracy Day when he listed “galloping population growth rate” as one of the reasons why government cannot create jobs for Nigeria’s army of restless youth.
Ironically, the president was curiously silent on how to tackle the dangerous population growth.

The imploding population time-bomb is partially responsible for the obdurate security crisis that has placed Nigeria on civil war footing.

It has inadvertently kept 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 armed robberies, banditry and kidnappings.

At the current annual growth rate of 2.6 per cent, Nigeria’s population would be perilously close to 250 million 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.

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 Nigeria remains its largest market in the continent.

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 per cent.

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. All these happen because population growth far out-pace economic growth.

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.

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.

China ignored a dangerous baby boom for decades. By the 1970s China’s population had crossed the 1 billion mark.

The Chinese slammed the brakes on population growth and decreed that couples should have only one child. Last month a national census indicated that China was encumbered with an ageing population where 20 per cent 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 tyrants 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 Nigeria 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. The world’s average is 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 with the hope that children would 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 no matter how poor a man is. 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.

No one can comfortably legislate against polygamy in Nigeria because 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 polygamy is outlawed.

Government can allow the Solomons of this world to marry as many wives as they want. However, 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.