From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye and Kemi Yesufu, Abuja
The Federal Government has launched a roadmap on harnessing demographic dividend through investment in youths in the country.
The roadmap will refocus on programmes and activities to ensure a healthy population, enhance the potential of young people to contribute to the economy, mainstream social protection, create social safety nets in all critical sectors and promote good governance and rule of law.
The launch was done at the National Summit on Demographic Dividend in Nigeria held at the State House Conference Centre, Abuja, by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo.
Osinbajo who was represented by the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udoma, said the democratic dividend is an accelerated economic growth resulting from changes in a country’s population age structure.
“It is expected that all sectors of the country will key into the opportunity presented by demographic dividend to move the country to achieve economic growth that will improve the wellbeing of all Nigerians,” he said.
The Acting President said the change in age structure is determined by transition from people having large families and living shorter lives to having small families and living longer while strategic investments are made in health, education, employment, trade and industry and good governance.
With the total fertility rate in the country at approximately 5.5 children per woman and a youthful age structure of about half of the population under the age of 35 years, Osinbajo noted that, “the implication of this kind of demographic realities for our country’s development may have consequences too grave to be ignored.”
He further noted that the population of Nigeria is estimated at 181.2 million in 2017 having grown at 3.2 per cent annually for the past decade and is expected to have an additional 68 million people by 2030 at this rate.
“The ERGP identifies investing in our people as a strategy to drive economic growth, meaning that we must promote access to healthcare and education, among others.”
Osinbajo urged states and local governments to buy into the multi-sectoral approach to programming for sustainable development.
“Following this summit, stakeholders are expected to develop an action plan for the implementation of the roadmap with detailed goals with targets and indicators as well as clear tasks, roles and responsibilities for tracking progress towards its realisation.
“A demographic dividend observatory of key indicators from the action will be domiciled in my office for monitoring and tracking the achievements of all sectors,” he said, thanking all stakeholders that participated in the pre-summit that generated the outcome of the summit. In 2016, African Heads of State and Governments devoted 2017 to harnessing the demographic dividend through investment in youths and have since gone further to adopt an African Union roadmap on harnessing demographic dividends through investments in youths.
The Minister of Health, Isaac Adewale, in his goodwill message called for a concerted effort to reduce the country’s population, which he said may by effect double the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country and take about 15 million people out of poverty.
He noted that Nigeria’s demographic design will be gloomy if it failed to do the right thing, which was to invest more on its youth population seeing that they hold the future of the country. He said the country needs to create a shift, which will entail increasing the number of people in the working age group, more growers, more producers than consumers.
He said the country also needs to “agree in a robust way to reduce our population. If we continue at this rate, we are likely to have a GDP per capita of about $5,800 by 2018. If we work harder to reduce the population, we might even double this GDP per capita and potentially we can lift about 15 million people out of poverty and that is good for our nation.
“We need to create a youth-centred approach that will bring our youths together. Let us give them hope and a sense of belonging because this country belongs to all of us.”