Newly released evidence indicate six states in the north could save up to N109.6 billion by 2050 in education alone, if they invest according to the needs of human development.
That calls for targeted investment in family planning to reduce population growth, increase access to education.
The MNCH2 project, sponsored by the UK Department for International Development, spent eight months working with ministries of health and budget and planning to analyse the demographics of Katsina, Kano, Kaduna, Jigawa, Yobe and Zamfara.
The findings have been presented as state briefs to each of the six states. They also reveal likely scenarios for the economic, education and health sectors of the states, based on population projection, socioeconomic activities and security situation.
The federal ministry of budget and national planning has established a “demographic dividends” unit to consider national planning using demographic evidence, which debuted at a meeting where the findings from the six states were disseminated in Abuja on Monday.
The unit is considered crucial in subnational coordination to ensure states align their development plans with the federal government’s development plan.
“Advocating rapid economic growth and development will be a difficult task if we fail to confront the explosive population growth rate we are facing,” said Ernest Umakhihe, permanent secretary of the ministry of budget and national planning.
The analyses show with targeted investment to control population growth would result in smaller overall population, more educated and working people and fewer dependents, impacting both the economy and employment.
Olumide Okunola, a World Bank senior health specialist, said adequate policies would help guarantee “a cohort that’s able to work more and save more.”
That scenario would see economy in the six states shift to a modern services-based economy with less emphasis on agriculture—and a combined gross domestic productivity of N3.3 billion across the six states alone.
Investment in health and education would also reduce population growth rate, meaning the states would need to train a total 8,081 fewer health workers by 2050.
In a breakdown, they would need 618 fewer doctors, 2,558 fewer nurses and 4,905 fewer community health extension workers.
The analysis suggests strategies to combat conflict must address immediate causes of conflicts and the demographic realities that contribute to it in order to experience decreased conflict.
“We are already feeling the pressure. We are going at a rate that if we don’t do something as a nation, we’ll face more problems in the future,” said Okunola.
“Until few years ago, I didn’t know about herdsmen or Boko Haram.”
A critical consideration is how the state-level evidence so far released can be leveraged to drive political will and inform what programmes are prioritized, planned and budgeted for.
Nigeria ranks 157 out of 169 countries on human development index—a figure that’s shifted from 0.52% in 2015 to 0.73% in 2017.
Average life expectancy has risen from 48 years in 2005 to 54 years in 2017, according to figures from the United Nations Development Programme.
“We cannot harness demographic dividends, if we don’t empower states with evidence data,” said Olumide.
“Doing the data analysis is the first step. The next thing is how you use the data to speak to power. The problem is not an Abuja problem, the solution lies in states.”
