Editorial
Managing Nigeria’s Population
Against the backdrop of this year’s World Population Day to be observed on Sunday, 11th July, 2021, the United Nations (UN) has informed on the urgency for people and states to be circumspect about the ungovernable growing populace of the world. Current estimates the world body projected indicate that no fewer than 83 million people are added to the global population each year.
According to the UN, the world’s population is assumed to reach an alarming 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 20100, supporting the medium-variant forecast. Based on this projection, states have been fully cautioned to promote attendance in this year’s anniversary to enhance consciousness and foster realisation of specific population issues.
Issues such as the impact of family planning on the rising populace, gender parity, maternal and infant health, poverty, human rights, sex education, contraceptive usage and safety procedures, like contraceptives, reproductive health, teenage pregnancy, girl-child education, teenage marriage and sexually transmitted infections have been pinpointed as mandatory to accomplish beneficial global population control and regulation.
Characterised by the theme: “Rights and Choices Are The Answer: Whether it is a baby boom or depression, the solution to changing fertility is to give priority to the reproductive health and rights of all”, the World Population Day was ratified in 1989 by the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to direct attention to the contingency and significance of population matters.
Sources have acknowledged that it took hundreds of thousands of years for the world population to advance to 1 billion. Then in just another 200 years or so, it increased sevenfold. In 2011, the universal population attained the seven billion mark, and today, it stands at 7.7 billion. Given this scenery, many states are showing growing apprehensions over changing fertility rates.
This growth has been stimulated by multiplying collections of people remaining to reproductive age and has been accompanied by considerable transformations in productivity projections, spreading urbanisation and boosting migration. These tendencies will have far-reaching ramifications for generations to come.
Of related consideration is Nigeria’s burgeoning population, which came under renewed focus when former President Olusegun Obasanjo advised against population explosion in the country. According to the elder statesman, the nation’s population was growing into a liability because of its improper management and warned that, except something was done, they might declare Nigeria the third-largest state in the world.
Obasanjo’s reprimand was appropriate and in tandem with reality. An International Monetary Fund (IMF) statement, as contained in its World Economic Outlook released after the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings, should prompt Nigeria to cease ignoring its population crisis and come up with innovative strategies to harness and check population increase for speedy advancement.
In 2017, the IMF saw some positive proofs of recovery, and it explained that this would enable Nigeria to outperform its mainland competitor, South Africa, in terms of GDP growth. The indicators included the relative stability and moderate enhancement of the oil industry, with policy initiatives and sufficient rain, as well as the cost and expansion of the agricultural sector.
But the fly in the ointment was the population bomb. With the prevailing population increase rate at 2.60%, GDP must expand at a higher figure to promote the Human Development Index. According to the UNDP, huge populations can advocate development if well exploited, but badly managed can hinder progress and plunge most people in populous countries into poverty.
The UN’s 2017 World Population Prospects stated that Nigeria had a population of 185.59 million, ranking seventh, and would exceed 300 million by 2050, becoming the world’s third-largest population after India and China, replacing Indonesia, the United States and Pakistan. Additional estimates by the World Bank stated that Nigeria’s per capita GDP was US$2,178. Despite being the strongest economy in Africa, it was, nevertheless, a poor country. Both South Africa and Egypt had per capita GDP of US$5,273 and US$3,514 respectively.
Therefore, to make substantial progress, Nigeria must manage its population. China and India have demonstrated right the late Chairman Mao Zedong’s aphorism that “a country’s greatest wealth is its people” by traversing from poor, agrarian economies to become the world’s second and seventh-largest economies by exploiting their vast pool of cheap labour to mass-produce agricultural, mineral and consumer goods.
There is a serious demand for a rejuvenated determination and political will to enforce the National Policy on Population for Sustainable Development outlining a sectorial strategy to deal with our multiplying population, rolled out in 2004, but abandoned thereafter. Nigeria should quicken and reinvigorate its family planning programme of four children per couple, promoted by General Ibrahim Babangida’s military administration.
Governments at all levels must join hands and work with donors, NGOs, and local communities to go over all parts of the country and reduce cultural and religious assumptions encouraging ownership of so many children. This should be followed by effective economic plans for modern agriculture, manufacturing, and innovation. The population of an advanced modern society abhors having many offspring.
There are moments in the life of a legislature when plain speaking becomes a public service. Senator Adams Oshiomhole provided such a moment on the floor of the Senate when he accused the Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi, of manifestly neglecting critical federal arteries in Edo and Delta States, and implored his colleagues to prevail on the Minister to adopt a more equitable and genuinely national approach to road infrastructure delivery. It was blunt, it was uncomfortable, and it was necessary.
The specifics of his complaint deserve restating. Drawing attention to the recent approval of some 20 new road projects despite the parlous state of existing ones, the former Edo State governor lamented that Nigerians cannot travel from Benin to Warri, Benin to Asaba, Benin to Auchi, or Auchi to Okene without encountering severe distress. He alleged a deliberate omission of these corridors from the national budget in the last three years, save for palliative interventions directed by President Bola Tinubu through tax credit arrangements. His question — “What have we done wrong?” — resonates far beyond the chambers of the National Assembly.
We lend our full and unequivocal support to that call. The Auchi-Benin Road, for instance, has been in a deplorable and near-impassable condition for several years, turning what should be a two-hour journey into an all-day ordeal of broken axles, extortionate fares, and despondent commuters. The media have, on multiple occasions, chronicled the suffering of motorists, traders, and students who ply that route. To describe it as a federal road today is to stretch the meaning of the term beyond recognition.
This pattern of sidelining is not confined to Edo or Delta. Even here in Rivers State, the disposition of the Federal Ministry of Works has left much to be desired, particularly along the Eleme axis of the East-West Road. That road, which ought to be a flagship of federal presence in the Niger Delta, has remained in a wretched state for long. Those who use it daily — workers at the Eleme Petrochemical Complex, the two refineries, Onne Port, and the countless ancillary industries — can attest to its deterioration. Work has proceeded in fits and starts without the sustained urgency such a strategic road demands.
The Eleme stretch is not a mere intra-state byway. It is the gateway to the nation’s economic jugular. According to the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing’s 2023 Highway Condition Survey, only about 35 per cent of the country’s 36,000 kilometres of federal roads are rated as being in good or fair condition, with the remainder classified as poor or very poor. The East-West Road, conceived in the 1970s to bind the entire Niger Delta, remains unfinished in critical sections more than four decades after. If it had been treated as a priority, the perennial gridlock, carnage, and economic loss on the Eleme-Refinery junction would have long been consigned to history.
The irony is as painful as it is glaring. The Niger Delta remains the goose that lays the golden eggs. Data from the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative [NEITI 2023 Oil and Gas Audit] show that the region still accounts for over 78 per cent of Nigeria’s federally collected export earnings and about 65 per cent of total government revenue. The National Bureau of Statistics [NBS Foreign Trade Report Q4 2024] similarly confirms that crude oil continues to dominate export receipts. By every metric of equity and economic logic, a region that sustains the national purse deserves first-rate consideration in the allocation of infrastructure, not afterthoughts and tokenism.
Road infrastructure is not largesse to be dispensed by favour; it is the skeleton upon which commerce, cohesion, and citizenship hang. When contracts are concentrated in one geopolitical zone while other zones are left to contend with craters, it erodes trust in the federation itself. The World Bank’s Nigeria Development Update [June 2023] estimated that poor transport connectivity inflates the cost of moving goods by up to 40 per cent and costs the Nigerian economy an estimated $1.5 billion annually in lost man-hours and vehicle maintenance. If we profess to be one country, then equity must be the compass that guides key institutions before any project is executed. Development must spread round, not pool in one place as though other regions do not matter.
There is also a grave security dimension that can no longer be ignored. The deplorable condition of federal roads has become a veritable enabler of criminality. The NBS Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey reported over 2.5 million incidents of kidnapping-related occurrences nationally, with transport workers identifying bad road spots as prime ambush points. When vehicles are forced to crawl at 10 kilometres per hour through failed sections at Auchi, Sapele Road, or Eleme, they become sitting ducks for armed gangs. Fixing bad roads, therefore, is not merely about convenience; it is about safeguarding lives.
By his intervention, Senator Oshiomhole has hit the nail on the head and reminded Minister Umahi of a fundamental constitutional truth: public office is held in trust. The Ministry of Works is not a personal estate where contracts are awarded according to whim or political convenience. It is a national institution funded by the collective resources of Nigerians, including the oil and gas rents from the very communities whose roads are now neglected. The Minister must demonstrate balance, transparency, and a pan-Nigerian outlook in the distribution of projects that impact the daily existence of citizens. Selective neglect breeds suspicion, and suspicion is corrosive at a time when the nation is preaching unity, oneness, equity, and justice.
Consequently, the National Assembly must go beyond rhetoric and assert its oversight powers with vigour. Sections 88 and 89 of the 1999 Constitution [as amended] empower the legislature to investigate and expose any maladministration in the execution of federal projects. If an office holder is not acting rightly, it is the duty of the Senate and the House of Representatives to call him to order. Oversight must not be reduced to budget approval ceremonies; it must translate to field verification, public hearings, and insistence that the Federal Character principle, as enshrined in Section 14(3) of the Constitution, reflects in road awards.
Let the Auchi-Okene, Benin-Warri, Benin-Asaba, and Eleme East-West gangways be restored to motorable dignity. Let priority be given to completing existing, economically vital roads before embarking on new ones. If those who, through their resources, sustain the federation are sidelined in the distribution of tangible dividends, it tells poorly of our nationhood. Bad roads must be fixed, and they must be fixed now, with fairness as the guiding standard.
