10 August 2018 — Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party (ANRP) has lent her voice to the important conversation on population growth in the country. Weeks ago Mr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, the Kano governor at Chatham House UK whilst speaking on ‘Higher Education and Demographic Growth in Africa’, had expressed concern about the problems associated with population explosion in Africa, particularly the increasing numbers of the uneducated population as a result. ‘One important factor that divides the population of the world into two is education, whether the population will be an asset or a liability depends on education’, he said. He further cited some data from his home state Kano underscore the point. The evidence presented by the data was not very pleasant.
ANRP posits that despite the sensitivity of the topic in our society, the question of population explosion is an essential one that has to be discussed and addressed. Along with this should the danger of the increasing number of out-of-school children; as well as the social, cultural, political and other factors associated with these problems. Also not leaving out the primal position of human capital development in our society.
Nigeria’s population growth stands at 7 million annually. On 1 January 2018 alone, UNICEF reports that there were 20,210 recorded births (which may not account for unrecorded births in unreached areas). At this rate, Nigeria shall be having 70 million children age 10 and below within a decade. The UN has projected Nigeria’s population to double within 3 decades and reach 480 million by 2050 — the third highest in the world by then — which is a faster pace than our infrastructural, social, and economic growth can possibly match.
Our country also has 13 million out-of-school children, the highest in the world; also the highest number of people living in extreme poverty, and the highest country with the highest percentage of people in extreme poverty. The crisis in the northeast Lake Chad region, as well as the farmer-herder conflicts are all not unconnected to population explosion.
ANRP encourages and advocates the use a series of approaches to persuade couples to limit the number of children they bear to the basic minimum — for both those who can adequately cater for more children and those who realistically cannot. Working with religious, cultural, and other opinion leaders behaviour change can be influenced, most especially in cultures where polygamy is practised. A system of incentives can also be provided for parents to adhere to this discipline, and also make it easy and convenient for couples.
Our most important asset as a country is not our oil but our human resource. ANRP deems education to be the process of converting human capital to human resource. It is for this reason that the Party prioritises free, compulsory, relevant, and qualitative education for all, most especially at the basic level.
ANRP hopes that these conversations shall continue for a long time until a time when a general consensus is reached on these issues.
