A sustainable population for Nigeria

A simple fact stares Nigeria in the face every day: our population growth rate has reached unsustainable levels, and has done so for decades now. This is manifest in the sheer numbers each year and over time, in comparison to other countries, and in relation to our collective productive capacity as measured by the ratio of economic to population growth rates.

By the end of this year, Nigeria’s total population will be 223.8 million people, according to various estimates including those by the World Bank, the United Nations Population Fund and the National Population Commission. The 2023 estimate means that Nigeria’s population would have risen by 2.41% from last year’s 218.5 million, an increase of 5.3 million people in just about 12 months.

Moreover, if current growth rates continue, Nigeria’s population is projected to hit over 728 million by the end of this century (the year 2100). That is nearly double the 401.3 million it would have reached by the middle of the century in 2050, according to World Population Review, a U.S think-thank. This means our total population would have multiplied 10 times, from just 45 million people in 1960 to the over 400 million projected by 2050.

For Nigeria, it is not just that the population is growing astronomically in terms of sheer numbers, but also relative to our present collective economic capacity. At the same time, as the population has been growing rapidly, multiplying five times since 1960, economic growth as measured by annual gross domestic product (GDP) has more or less stagnated, resulting in an unfavourable and unsustainable economic and population growth ratio.

To illustrate, while Nigeria has added over 25 million people to its total population size in just five years since 2018, when we were 198 million people, the economy has literally not gone anywhere but down, with an average annual growth rate of 1.8% of real GDP over the same period. And overall since 1960, Nigeria has had an average economic performance of a modest 3.7%. This is about the entire time our population has quadrupled from 45 million to 223 million people, indicating a wide disparity between population growth and economic performance in the same country, and hence an unsustainable population growth.

Now, the argument has often been advanced that the problem with Nigeria’s population is not so much the geometric growth of the numbers over time but the inability of the Nigerian state to harness the potentials of the population to harvest even better economic performance for all. In support of this idea, demographic figures in countries like China and India have often been used to illustrate why economic management, rather than population management, is the problem for Nigeria.

There is a grain of truth in this argument, but it is no more than just that, a grain. Nigeria can certainly do better in managing its economic resources for realizing its fullest potentials. But no level of economic advancement in Nigeria can support our current population growth rate, if it continues unchecked. Indeed, population management is itself an important part of economic management. It is no accident that the superlative growth rates of between 7% to 10% annually that China has posted over the past four decades have also coincided with lower birth rates during the same period.

For Nigeria, therefore, this year’s World Population Day, which comes up later this week on Tuesday, 11th July, 2023, provides all of us with an opportunity to reflect deeply and take concrete actions towards reframing our population growth as an important aspect of our social and economic development. If the end of the century when our population would have risen to well over 700 million on current trends seems far away in the future, the year 2050, when we would have reached well over half of that figure is just around the corner, both figuratively and practically.

In the past, population policy has tended to be decreed, more or less requiring citizens to have a particular number of children and no more. In this wise, the Revised National Policy on Population for Sustainable Development launched last year by President Mohammadu Buhari came at the right time. It stresses the urgent need to address Nigeria’s high fertility rate and other major causes of our rapid population growth like a lack of access to family planning counseling and commodities, hence the setting up of the National Council on Population Management (NCPM) headed by the former president himself.

But this revised policy can only succeed if Nigeria confronts the social norms and values that drive fertility rates up. This requires concerted efforts from traditional rulers, religious and community leaders, civil society organizations and media to reframe debates around population management and control more positively for the benefit of all. As Daily Trust congratulates Nigerians on this year’s World Population Day, we urge the current government to work with all relevant stakeholders to implement the laudable provisions of the revised policy on population for us all.