By Nick Dazang
Monday last week was World Population Day. On that auspicious day, the United Nations (UN), released the 2022 World Population Proposals. The proposals were predicated on a report prepared by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
The report projected that the global population will reach the eight billion mark by 2050 and that India will surpass China as the most populous country in the world with a whopping 1.66 billion people. Nigeria, according to the projection, will be the fourth most populated country on earth with 375 million people. A further reading of the report shows that Nigeria has come from the tenth most populous country in 1990, with 94 million people, to become the sixth most populous country in 2012.
As a matter of fact, the figures released by the UN are a chronicle foretold. As far back as 2014, population experts had projected that our demographics will change dramatically, with Africa having a “youth bulge”. Besides, on February 3, 2014, Christine Lagarde, former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund(IMF), now President of the European Central Bank, presented a landmark paper at the Richard Dimbleby Lecture that provided an inkling. Entitled:” A New Multilateralism for the 21st Century”, Lagarde projected that the world’s demography would change and that: “In the coming decades, we expect India to surpass China, and Nigeria to surpass the United States in terms of population. And both China and India will start aging in the near future”.
Nigeria’s mostly young population ought to be what demographic pundits refer to as a “population dividend”. About 42.54 per cent of Nigeria’s population is made up of youths. This, again, ought to be a boon. This is because a large and youthful population is itself considered in international relations as an index of power. Countries with large populations can always count on and draw from their youths to fight and defend their territorial integrity. Also, large populations constitute big markets. Goods and services produced or provided have ready markets. In addition, the youths are productive, energetic and creative. These are blessings. A country like Nigeria can draw from its large and mostly youthful population.
But to reap from the aforementioned dividends, the country must invest massively in educating its youths and creating an auspicious environment for them to thrive. Remarked Christine Lagarde in the aforesaid Dimbleby Lecture: “A youthful population is certainly fertile ground for innovation, dynamism, and creativity. Yet everything will depend on generating enough jobs to satisfy the aspirations of the rising population. This calls for a single-minded focus on improving education and, in particular, on the potentially massive effects of technological change on employment”.
Alas, rather than investing massively in education and creating an enabling environment for our highly ingenious and enterprising youths to robustly express their talents, what we have witnessed is a retrogressive short shrift given to our educational sector. The shutdown of our universities, since February this year, speaks eloquently of our lack of interest to harvest this blessing. Consequently, the blessing may morph into a curse.
As the 2023 General Elections approach, we must summon to the upper reaches of national discussion our increasing population and its many implications. We must interrogate ourselves as to how we can harness this growing population and re-orient it towards delivering dividends for us, our children and our grandchildren.
The way forward is to, first of all, re-jig our educational system from the primary to the tertiary levels to accommodate contemporary global trends. Premium should be laid on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. STEM education is the bedrock on which innovations can be built. Countries which set store by innovations such as Israel have become hubs for technology and start ups. Its armaments industry, with its feats in assault rifles, drones, iron dome and iron beam put that country in the front rank.
We must re-orient our educational system towards entrepreneurship and blue-collar jobs. Entrepreneurship should be the cornerstone of the school curriculum. That way, our scholars, upon graduating from school, should be able to set up shops with small capital and employ themselves and others.
Third, we must urgently invest in skills acquisition. Fashion designing, welding, carpentry, computer studies, music, printing, building, etc should be taught at the early stages of our education. We must create and equip more schools of technology so that their graduates can fire our innovations and create exquisite products that can rival, if not surpass, imported ones. This will create jobs as well as save foreign exchange.
Above all, we must urgently address our power and security concerns. Whichever government that succeeds President Buhari’s must address the twin fiends of insecurity and power. Our power architecture must factor solar power and integrate it into the national electricity grid. This will increase electricity production, bring down the cost of production for manufacturers, enable their capacities to improve and employ more hands. Improving our dire security situation will foster a return to the farms, thereby occupying a large chunk of the population and boosting food production and security. A country at peace with itself will spur the movement of goods and services, add needed fillip to commercial activities and bring about prosperity. It is only when we address these issues with a single-minded determination that our growing population will be a boon and not a bane.
Dazang is a former Director at the Independent National Electoral Commission
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