OF POPULATION, HOPES AND ASPIRATIONS

Nigeria needs a serious conversation on population control

With the theme, ‘Realising the hopes and aspirations of young people for their futures,’ the 2026 World Population Day will be marked tomorrow. It focuses on how young people are navigating a rapidly changing world while examining their aspirations regarding education, mental well-being and family life. With a demographic bulge that is putting our country in a very difficult and potentially explosive situation, we hope that authorities in Nigeria and critical stakeholders will use the occasion to begin a conversation on the need for sustainable population.

If a sustainable society is the one with moderate population growth that enables its members to achieve a high quality of life, it goes without saying that a growing population that is not matched with commensurate socio-economic development can only breed chaos. That precisely is the essence of the World Population Day established by the United Nations (UN) and first observed on 11th July 1989, to raise global awareness on the issue.

Nigeria, the seventh most populous country in the world, has a fertility rate that outstrips its economic growth.  And for more than two decades, the economy has been unable to create enough jobs to absorb its growing army of graduates. Available figures paint a dire situation of millions of Nigerian youths roaming the streets looking for work but finding none. The clear and present danger of such a high level of idleness among millions of young persons are already manifest in the high level of crimes in virtually every corner of the country. Joblessness and frustrations are evidently fuelling the frequent cases of unrest across the country.

According to the United Nations population prediction, by the year 2050, three of the 10 most populous countries in the world will be in Africa, with more than a quarter of them in Nigeria. Against the background that this uncontrolled population growth is already stretching the few infrastructure facilities in the country and contributing in large measure to the poor standards of living, there is indeed an urgent need to address the dire consequences of this challenge.   

The World Bank has in recent years warned that Nigeria is currently undergoing the worst unemployment crisis in its history. Three years ago, it authored a report, ‘Of Roads Less Travelled: Assessing the Potential for Migration to Provide Overseas Jobs for Nigeria’s Youth’. The report particularly raised the alarm over the nation’s expanding working-age population combined with scarce domestic employment opportunities amid dwindling resources. This, according to the report, was creating high rates of unemployment, especially for the growing youth population.

 The essence of the World Population Day is to engender conversations on how individual well-being and socio-economic development of society are often conditioned on population dynamics. It also serves as a reminder for countries like Nigeria that a growing population presents both challenges and opportunities. Indeed, one of the issues that should task authorities in Nigeria is the growing unemployment, especially among young people. A combination of rising unemployment, booming demography, and unfulfilled aspirations, according to the World Bank, result in increasing pressure on young Nigerians to migrate abroad and the stories are not always pleasant for many of them.

It is a notorious fact that most of the people involved in the various crimes that now define our country are youths who if otherwise meaningfully engaged would have been unavailable for those anti-social endeavours. The high rate of out-of-school children and poor output in the education sector also contribute negatively to deepening the problem as the nation churns out a crop of uncompetitive youth in a new world driven by technology, skills, and knowledge.

To effectively tackle these challenges, we must start with the much-needed conversation on population control in Nigeria.