Nigeria is a prominent country that few can afford to ignore. It is Africa’s largest economy. It is the largest exporter of crude oil in Africa. Above all, Nigeria is the world’s most populous black nation. The world knows Nigeria as a giant in deep slumber given its enormous but latent human and natural resources.
That assessment is likely to remain for a pretty long time because the rulers of Nigeria have no plans to change the sad narrative.
Last week, Nigeria made the news again for the wrong reasons. The researchers in the University of Washington Institute for Health, Metrics and Evaluation contend that Nigeria is doing a keen contest with China, the world’s most populous nation and second largest economy.
Nigeria is not working to replace China as the world’s second largest economy. With its humble position as number-27 in world’s economic ranking, and world’s headquarters of poverty, Nigeria lacks the economic muscle to contest wealth position with China.
The research report contends that the contest between Nigeria and China is about population. Nigeria’s population, the researchers argued, would beat China’s by 2100 (80 years from now). China’s population would drop from 1.4 billion to 721 million while that of Nigeria would rise to 791 million. Nigeria’s population would be second only to that of India which would soon replace China as the world’s most populous nation.
The research contends that the world’s population would decline drastically by the end of the century due to low fertility, while that of sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest region would triple to more than 3 billion.
The petrifying scenario is that Nigeria and the rest of poverty stricken sub-Saharan Africa would be exporting their excess population to developed economies in Europe, North America and Asia.
With massive infrastructure deficit especially in education and healthcare delivery, Nigeria and the rest of the impoverished sub-Saharan Africa would be exporting unskilled and uneducated labour to the developed economies. They would be hewers of wood and drawers of water with little or no intellectual input to the developed economies. It would be a horrifying replay of the current exodus of thousands of illiterate, unskilled young men from Northern Nigeria to the south where they are now cleaning gutters and dislodging sewages.
The rulers of Nigeria are disturbingly apathetic to the population time-bomb ticking away leisurely. The time-bomb is currently under-going a phased explosion in Northern Nigeria in the form of banditry, kidnappings, armed robberies and bare-faced terrorism.
Thousands of deprived, unskilled young men armed only with head knowledge of the Qur’an are migrating on daily basis from the leadership-induced poverty scourge in the north to perceived greener pastures in Lagos and other parts of the south.
The federal government has repeatedly played ostrich to the brewing population calamity.
Last week the Nigerian Population Commission (NPC) said that Nigeria’s population now stands at 206 million. No one has done anything to tame the disproportionate population growth in an economy that has been brought to its knees by unmitigated treasury looting, skewed income distribution system and myopic economic planning.
Selfish politicians have kept the economy limping at a distraught growth rate of 1.8 per cent while the population surges on at 2.6 per cent per annum. Nigerian women are among the most fertile in the world. The country’s fertility rate stands at an embarrassing 5.6 children per woman when the global average is a scant 2.9 children per woman.
That explains why 75 per cent of Nigeria’s population is made up of people between the ages of 16 and 35 years. Only six per cent of Nigerians live above age 65. In Japan, 25 per cent of the population is 65 years and above.
Five million youths enter the boisterous Nigerian labour market every year even as Nigeria toils to create less than one million jobs in a year.
Consequently, life expectancy is understandably short in Nigeria at 53 years for men. The standard of living is abysmally low to sustain aged people. The healthcare delivery system is in advance stage of decay. In some rural communities, the nearest hospital is some 40 kilometers away. In some parts of Bauchi state pregnant women in labour are ferried on the back of donkeys to the nearest maternity home. Some do not make it alive to the promised land.
That again explains the awful maternal and infant mortality rates in Nigeria. The maternal mortality rate stands at 814 women per 100, 000 live births, while child mortality rate is 120 per 1, 000 live births. That is a world record. About 10 per cent of Nigerian children die before their fifth birthday because their parents depend on highly toxic herbs for treating children.
Population explosion has exerted unimaginable pressure on Nigeria’s decaying infrastructure. Nigeria has the largest electricity deficit in impoverished sub-Saharan Africa. About 100 million Nigerians have no access to electricity. Ghana supplies electricity to 83 per cent of its citizens. Only 56 per cent of Nigerians access electricity at grossly irregular intervals.
Even among the lucky 56 per cent of the population with access to electricity, average annual per capita electricity consumption is abysmally low at 147 kilowatt hours (kwh). That figure is 20 per cent of the average in low-middle income countries.
Nigeria’s education system is in such advanced stage of decay that 13.5 million children of school age cannot find seats in the country’s over-crowded public schools. Millions of youths have damned the consequence and live on crime. In Nigeria, crime pays because millions cheat the system with impunity.
The researchers in the University of Washington have succeeded in portraying Nigeria’s population growth as a global calamity waiting to happen. That is enough to compel world leaders to expose the looters of Nigeria’s enormous wealth, return the loots and compel the rulers of Nigeria to prosecute the mega thieves and tame its population growth.
With a population of 206 million, and close to 30, 000 new babies arriving daily, the world’s most populous black nation is teetering on the brink of a catastrophic economic and social implosion as it spends 99 per cent of its lean revenue on debt service. If Nigeria implodes, the whole world will shudder.