A report by the ‘World Poverty Clock’ stated that “Nigeria has overtaken India as the largest number of people living in extreme poverty”.
Emphatically, extreme poverty as defined by World Bank is living on $1.25 or less a day. In fact, according to world poverty clock extreme poverty in Nigeria is growing by six people every minute, the highest number in the world. Its survey showed that at the end of May (2018), Nigeria had an estimated 87 million people in extreme poverty, compared to India’s 73 million. It forecasts that Nigeria shall become the world’s third largest country by 2050.
Nigeria seems a mass odor, continentally and internationally.
The population of the country as at the time she gained independence was an estimate of 45.2 million. According to the National Bureau of statistics in 2012, the total population of citizens in Nigeria was around 166.2 million people. This in itself constitutes a change of about 268% between the years, 1960 and 2012.
The world population review has revealed that as of 2019, the estimated population of Nigeria is over 200.96million. This statistics establishes that there are about 2.35% of Nigerians in the entire earth’s population. Therefore, one out of every 43 people in the world is a Nigerian.
Major Population increase is an excessive growth in the number of people, above thegeographical area and resources available. Key players in population increase are persons who are illiterates of the dangers of perpetual birth. However, the obtainable in the 21st century is
technology and as such people would not be needed to handle certain tasks. So, there’s obviously no reason to give birth without control. Digitization is reducing Human Resource demands.
The higher the population, the lower the resources to create enabling environment for economic activities and individual endeavors and as such we get engulfed by the brain drain syndrome.
Controlling the brain drain syndrome which poses to be a critical issue affecting the human resource development index of the Nigerian nation as more Nigerian professionals in diverse fields, especially in medical and educational sectors of the nation’s economy are leaving the shores of the country for Europe, America and other developed countries of the world for greener pasture.
Those in leadership capacities have not being purposively committed to controlling the population growth rate or maximizing the potential of its human resource. Here is my point of view, if the population growth is controlled, more resources would be available to cater for a sizeable number of individuals.
Birth control is not supernatural. Older Singaporeans would never forget the ‘stop at two policy’ by lee kuan Yew which was meant as population control due to Singapore’s small land size.
Further solutions:
1. Provision of basic amenities especially in the health sector
2. Embarking on an aggressive campaign using different media for the purpose of sensitizing the public on the effect of excessive child bearing and the need for reduction.
3. Rewarding adherent individuals.
*** Written by Olabanji Favour.
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