Job Osazuwa
In an overcrowded neighbourhood in Meiran community in Agbado Oke-Odo Local Council Development Area (LCDA) of Lagos State, Mr Ade Odunuga wrapped a faded brown towel round his waist, waiting for his turn to use the bathroom.
Oduguga, who is in his early 40s, is one of over 50 occupants living in an eight-room house, popularly known as face-to-face apartment, at Baba Ijebu area of the community. Like many of his co-tenants, he had come from outside Lagos to seek greener pastures in the state. But he soon discovered that a rapidly growing population already overwhelmed Lagos. Consequently, he has to cross the hurdle of housing problem in the mega city that pushed him to find himself in the low-income area.
“I am trapped in Lagos. But my people in Osun State will be thinking that I have made it big in Lagos. We are all struggling here to survive,” he said.
Every week, tens of thousands of people migrate to Lagos and other major cities across the country to seek a better life. But many end up living in the slums and shanties.
Nobody knows exactly how many people live in Nigeria at the moment, but analysts agree that Nigeria’s population is growing at a terrifying rate.
The rising spate of children that are out of school, unemployment, insecurity and dearth in infrastructure has remained worrisome to all keen followers of the population index. It is believed that except something critical is done urgently to check the unpalatable growth, the country is as good as sitting on a ticking time bomb.
The country’s population is estimated to be about 200 million without corresponding infrastructure to meet the citizens’ needs. Many Nigerians are jobless and hoping year in, year out, for a better tomorrow.
It has been projected that by 2050, Nigeria will have twice the population it has today. More than half will live in cities, and about 60 per cent of them will be under 25. It is also postulated that in about 30 years, Nigeria will overtake the US to become the world’s third most populated country behind China and India.
Worried by the rising figure, many people have called for drastic means to regulate birth control in the country. There has been a huge push to reduce the fertility rate. They have maintained that if the birth rate was to slow down, the economy would get a welcome boost.
But others have kicked against such proposal, supporting their claim with religious and ethnic sentiments. And the debate and controversy have continued for years.
Also perturbed by the situation, the Federal Government on February 17, expressed concern at the population growth rate in the country, describing it as pretty high.
Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, who stated this at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies in Jos. Plateau State, said between 1991 and 2006 when the last population census was conducted, Nigeria’s annual growth rate stood at 3.18 per cent. He noted that at this growth rate, Nigeria’s population in 2050 would be about 543 million.
He said: “Clearly this population size will be more of a burden than an asset, unless there is an appropriate and commensurate growth in the economy to take care of the growing population.”
Saying that the Federal Government was determined to tackle the challenge through the appropriate policy framework, Osinbajo said that the government approved the ‘Population Growth and Human Capital Development Challenges and Opportunities’ “as the focus of study for this year’s Senior Executive Course 42 participants to enable them to articulate evidence-based and appropriate responses to the issues.”
The Vice-President, who was represented on the occasion by the acting Head of Service of the Federation, Mrs Folashade Yemi-Esan, said that the Federal Government believes in the critical role of human capital development as a response mechanism to rapid population growth in our national economy.
But many concerned Nigerians have called on the government to put adequate infrastructure in place to make life more meaning for the people. This set of people believe that Nigeria’s population growth will bring it a demographic dividend if the young workforce is utilised to drive economic growth. And they maintain that by doing so, the country will break out from the poverty that is ravaging the people at the moment.
In a telephone chat, an economist based in Benin, Mr Isokpan Obasuyi said that the growing population is supposed to usher in a comparative advantage, but regretted that Nigeria was not prepared and has failed to tap into such an opportunity.
“It doesn’t happen by accident. China, India and the rest countries took pragmatic steps to break that poverty jinx by exploring their high population. They invested heavily in education, human capacity development and massive infrastructure. But what we still have in Nigeria is battling with unstable 5, 000 mega watts of electricity when we are supposed to be talking of above 100, 000 watts.
“Most of the people in authority know what to do to transform Nigeria in a few years, but they won’t do it because of personal gains. There is no problem with population growth, but lack of preparation for it. We don’t have new roads, hospitals or schools. So, there must be a chaos and disaster,” he said.
Across Nigeria, roads are potholed. Schools and hospitals are not enough, and parks, recreational grounds and playing fields are in short supply.
In October 2019, the Emir of Kano, Mohammed Sanusi II said that Nigeria’s huge population was a liability and not an asset.
He said that Nigeria’s policies were yet to be focused on harnessing the huge potential of its population. He also attributed the spate of kidnapping, armed robbery, insurgency, farmers-herders crisis and many other social ills to the population growth.
His words: “People talk that our population is an asset, but we are yet to get there. Nigeria’s population is currently a liability because most of the root causes of problems such as kidnapping, armed robbery, Boko Haram, drug addiction are all tied to the population that we have and the question is, how do you turn that into a productive one?”
Mr Emmanuel Ogugu, who hails from Delta State, told the reporter: “When I arrived Lagos, I thought it would be easy, but then I realised how much harder it was to get a job. It took me two and half years to get something doing at a factory in Ikeja. Anywhere I went to for employment opportunities; I was always told there was no vacancy.
“We were four graduates living in one room in Obanikoro area of Lagos. Not too long, another person joined us. Only two of them had jobs while the rest of us were roaming the streets hunting for job for years. I am talking of about nine years ago.
“At a point, I wanted to just start selling and buying anything, at least to be able to feed myself. But I couldn’t see anyone to help me raise 50, 000 naira that I needed for the business. Those years remain the most frustrating period in my life as a graduate.
“And a lot of damage has been done over the years. More graduates have been churned out from the higher institutions.”
For instance, in maximising human capacity, Ethiopia’s economy is dwarfed by that of Nigeria, but it is the continent’s fastest growing and is betting it all on massive infrastructure investment and an industrial revolution to transform a nation of farmers into makers.
“Nigeria’s population is even outgrowing the supply of electricity. The current thinking is that they need to reverse urbanisation and get people to go back to the villages for industrialised farming, but that’s not going to work,” says a town-planning expert.
Over the years, efforts to slow down population growth and reduce maternal and child mortality rate in Nigeria through family planning have hit a brick wall.
Nigeria has remained the most populous country in Africa and the most populous black nation globally. The National Population Commission estimates the country’s population to be 198 million, but other sources have said that t is above 200 million.
To curtail the unsustainable population growth, especially through procreation, the federal government at the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning made a commitment to scale up promotion of family planning to Nigerians. One of the ways to achieve this was to be done by making contraceptive consumables available to those who need them and when they need them.
Unfortunately, many sexually active women are simply reluctant to embrace contraceptives. Their husbands have not helped the situation either. Contraceptives are methods, devices or drugs used to reduce or prevent unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions.
In spite of advocacy by government and development partners on the benefits of family planning, acceptance of modern contraceptives has remained very low in Nigeria, and sometime ago openly condemned in the Northern part of the country.
Attempts by medical experts to explain the obvious benefits of family planning to women, especially to space child birth and thus replenish vital nutrients lost during the process have been misconstrued due to misconceptions.
According to experts, it is ideal for a woman to wait for at least 18 months after the last birth before another conception.
It is said that 87 per cent of women in Nigeria or their partners do not use modern or traditional contraceptives. The statistics reveals that much needs to be done, especially in the northern part of the country, to make Nigerian women embrace modern contraceptives.
Researches placed the fertility rate in Nigeria at 5.7 children per woman, while sexual and reproductive behaviour of Nigerians show that majority of men and women practise sex before marriage.
A study in 2018 revealed that based on geopolitical zones, women from the North-East and North-West (92 per cent) constituted the highest percentage of those who do not use any form of contraceptives. It also revealed that the rate of the non-use of contraceptives among women is also lower in urban areas than in rural areas, with 78.9 to 90 per cent respectively.
Fertility and family planning experts have blamed the low acceptance of contraceptives in Nigeria on misconception and lack of knowledge of the various options available.
Most women are said to be afraid of hormonal imbalances, but as a general rule, experts have said that family planning does not cause hormonal imbalance. Instead, some form of family planning helps to regularise woman’s menstrual period.
A general practitioner, Mrs Mary Fapohunda, who is based in Lagos, urged government to step up advocacy and educating Nigerians on the merit of using family planning methods.
“There is nothing to worry about it. All that is needed is proper understanding of how it works. The benefits are numerous. The challenge now is that only the educated are already accepting it,” she said.