DarkJeddi:
There's a significant difference in population growth between North and South,

You can't compare the mainly Monogamous South East households and the predominant Polygamous North..

Let's not even go into age at inception of giving birth,contraceptive availability, education and poverty that contributes to the hyper population growth of the North.

Look around you in the South,how many homeless Almajiris do you see roaming about?

hmmm222:
Make I go born

Obi1kenobi:


I don't have much time to go digging for the records with my activities today, but I've read a number of reports and stats in the past and there is little difference in fertility rate between Northern women and Southern women. Polygamy doesn't have that much of an effect. 2 women married to the same man in a polygamous household who each have 3 children contribute as much to the population as 2 different women each married to 2 different men who each also have 3 children.

Fertility rate is the most relevant statistic and Southern women breed just as much as Northern women. I'm Igbo and we are not polygamous. Yet, we breed a lot. Most of my aunts have at least 4 kids (one has 7) and my own mum had 5. Nigeria has a fertility rate of about 5.5 births per woman which is just insane when many Western countries have less than 2 births per woman (which is population replacement threshold). It's like people in our society are engaged in a breeding competition. Little wonder we had a smaller population than the UK at independence, but today, we are about 3 times the population of the UK.

amaniro:


He's not correct in the comparison of Kano and Niger Republic.

Awoleesu:


I appreciate your sense of the nuanced fertility rate cum population stats, but I beg to differ on your comparison, which attempts to gloss over the sharp contrast between average Northern household and their Southern counterparts...

If the numbers you rolled out (i.e Aunt with 7 kids) are not just for a paradigm, then I bet you hardly know what the contention is about. What I'm saying in essence is, the average household in a typical Northern Nigeria setting is about 1:3:14...

Where 1 - Man
3 - Wives
14- Kids

Do a comparison on the following :

GEJ has one wife and approx 6 kids (both biological and foster)

OBJ has about 4+ wives and approx 9 kids(both legitimate and illegitimate)


Atiku has 4 wives and 23 kids

Buhari had 3 wives and about 12 kids...


It is not much about the 'academic' average fertility rate of women across both divides, but the unabating and indiscriminate incubation of these women by their male folks.

SpecialAdviser:
Lol. Oga you have forgotten they are the almajiri population you guys need to get to power? The result is already here in the Book Haram we have seen and yet to see.

The north is irreparably daft. In your religion you were told to marry at most 4, you turned to competition to marry up to 4 wives. Those who marry less than 4 start looking like sinners. This is even when you were not told that to marry 1 is sin.

They claim is because the number of women outnumber men. If you marry 4 women and each of them give birth to a minimum of 3 girls, what have you done to the society? You took out 4 and gave out 12.

Even in advanced Muslim society, people have become conscious of the number of kids they produce. Bible said that a man who cannot take care of his family is worse than an unbelleiver.

Each time I go to the north and see how beggars fill the street and how unkept kids are, I feel so ashamed

Obi1kenobi:


Again, on a macro scale, these would not make a difference to the wider picture. The North-South population ratio since independence has remained roughly the same (also unchanged is Southerners accusing Northerners of inflating their numbers). Male-female populations are largely 50-50 in all societies(give or take 1% either way). So obviously all Northerners can't marry multiple wives or they'll run out of women basically. In a sample space of 20 men and 20 women, if 5 of those men have 2 wives or more, a few others would have one, and the rest would have none. The notion that all Northerners are polygamists with dozens of children is hyperbolized. What matters in projections extrapolated in national statistics is the fertility rate for women: the average number of children each woman has. And there is no significant disparity between Northern women and Southern women. An Hausa or Kanuri Muslim woman doesn't seem any more likely to have 5 or more kids than an Igbo or Bini Christian women. Nigerians simply have it in common - North or South, East or West, Muslims or Christians - to breed like rabbits. If there is any factor that should reduce the fertility rate of Southern women compared to their Northern counterparts, it should be their higher educational attainment, and greater civic liberties, rather than which culture is more polygamous. But strangely, this doesn't seem to have the impact it should.

Awoleesu:


I appreciate your sense of the nuanced fertility rate cum population stats, but I beg to differ on your comparison, which attempts to gloss over the sharp contrast between average Northern household and their Southern counterparts...

If the numbers you rolled out (i.e Aunt with 7 kids) are not just for a paradigm, then I bet you hardly know what the contention is about. What I'm saying in essence is, the average household in a typical Northern Nigeria setting is about 1:3:14...

Where 1 - Man
3 - Wives
14- Kids

Do a comparison on the following :

GEJ has one wife and approx 6 kids (both biological and foster)

OBJ has about 4+ wives and approx 9 kids(both legitimate and illegitimate)


Atiku has 4 wives and 23 kids

Buhari had 3 wives and about 12 kids...


It is not much about the 'academic' average fertility rate of women across both divides, but the unabating and indiscriminate incubation of these women by their male folks.

Mindfulness:


Please elaborate.

Mining?

Blue3k:


Gladly I red a few years ago Singapore reduced growth rate by having disincentives to having more kids. They had the stop at two campaign to convince population to have less kids. They legalized abortion and encouraged women to sterilize themselves after second child. They went on to reduce tax and social benefits to having more kids.

•Workers in the public sector would not receive maternity leave for their third child or any subsequent children

• Hospitals were required to charge incrementally higher fees for each additional child.

• Income tax deductions would only be given for the first two children

• Large families were penalised in housing assignments.

• Third or fourth children were given lower priorities in education;

• Top priority in top-tier primary schools would be given only to children whose parents had been sterilised before the age of forty.

Yes I say mining because its a tiny sector of the economy thst holds lots of potential. It can employ alot people up value chain. Then these materials can be exported raw or used in domestic manufacturing.

Mindfulness:


Didn't know all of it. Thanks. Very educative.



Why haven't you mentioned renewable energies? India has recently built giant solar powers plants and is expanding in this sector, including wind and hydro, meeting the country's energy needs. Note that this is the world's biggest democracy with over one billion people.

Blue3k:


I personally dont care for renewables because they're intermittent and think gas is better. Also they're already setting up solar panels and plants in a northern states. I read story on nairaland about it Borno. Then theres hydro plant planned in Plateau. I dont know about wind energy.

Obi1kenobi:

If there is any factor that should reduce the fertility rate of Southern women compared to their Northern counterparts, it should be their higher educational attainment, and greater civic liberties, rather than which culture is more polygamous. But strangely, this doesn't seem to have the impact it should.

Blue3k:


Gladly I red a few years ago Singapore reduced growth rate by having disincentives to having more kids. They had the stop at two campaign to convince population to have less kids. They legalized abortion and encouraged women to sterilize themselves after second child. They went on to reduce tax and social benefits to having more kids.

•Workers in the public sector would not receive maternity leave for their third child or any subsequent children

• Hospitals were required to charge incrementally higher fees for each additional child.

• Income tax deductions would only be given for the first two children

• Large families were penalised in housing assignments.

• Third or fourth children were given lower priorities in education;

• Top priority in top-tier primary schools would be given only to children whose parents had been sterilised before the age of forty.

omohayek:

More education and greater civil liberties don't have the expected dampening effect on southern fertility because the crucial element through which these two factors work their magic - by steeply raising the opportunity costs for educated, professional women of having more children instead of pursuing their careers - is simply not there. Higher education in Nigeria simply doesn't pay nearly as well as it should in a well-run economy, a shameful fact the geriatric ignoramus currently in Aso Rock had no qualms about commenting on, as if he had nothing to do with bringing it about ...

Obi1kenobi:


I think 2 reasons these dampening effects aren't there for educated, working Southern women are:
1) A patriarchal culture that still controls women and compels their conformity to expected norms. Further reinforced by the overt religiosity of Nigerians - whether Muslim or Christian - that reinforce these traditional African norms. While I don't want our women going the way of fanatical, misandrist, 3rd-wave feminist liberals in Western culture, you would expect educated, career-driven women in our 21st century society to rebel against these norms they are expected to conform to - but most of them end up like their mothers and grandmothers.

2) Your "opportunity cost" point is an interesting one I've debated with people before. One of the enablers of career women being able to raise multiple kids in Nigeria without it affecting their upward mobility is the cheap child labor we call "house boys" and "house girls". It's tolerated here, but wouldn't be in most civilized countries where this would be seen as child trafficking and child labor. Growing up as a child in Lagos, we often lived with at least 2 house-helps (as much as 3 house helps when I was around 6 or 7-years-old) that were either the kids of impoverished distant relatives or the kids of impoverished clansmen from our village. They would take us to school and pick us from school and do all the house chores. It made it easy for my mum to raise her 5 kids with no effect on her career. Meanwhile, my sister in the UK has a nightmare of a time raising her only son in London while trying to work. And paying £10 per hour in babysitting rates. Same with another sister of mine in Winnipeg with 2 daughters who was forced to quit her job cos she and her husband found it hard juggling their time to take care of the kids.

Blue3k:
Its weird he mentions everything except the contraceptives, female education and tax incentives to reduce population growth. The population growth rate along side rising unemployment rate is scary. The government has to tackle both immediately with combo of economic reforms and social engineering similar to Singapore not China.

I was going to point that out. I don't get how the solution to a booming population is to create opportunities from thin air where we should be working hard to avoid that explosion with solutions like you mentioned.

Logically the agricultural sector isnt going to employ more people as a percentage as productivity rise. The main growth in sector is food processing. I'd suggest going towards manufacturing and mining as simple solution.

I don't think I support anymore exploitation of our natural resources, it hasn't yielded meaningful results so far.

Princedapace:
This governor is still talking about sharing NNPC money. Big idi*ts parading them selves as governors and presidents. They dont care becus they are well secured.

This is simple, a system of govt that will grant states or best still, regions more access to their own growth is what Nigeria needs. By the time u no longer need to run to Abuja to take decisions and your state citizens descend on u three times, u will have sense.

We are still hoping to get 1600 respondents for my friend's PhD survey questionaire. Pls, you can be of help.


Pls guys, a friend of mine is doing her PhD in the university of Florida.

She needs our help. She has her survey questionnaire crafted online. She is understudying birth control in Nigeria. That is a very interesting topic. She needs 1600 respondents for this research. You can participate. Survey takes less than 20 minutes.

Pls, to help her with your views about birth control, kindly check my profile and see the link on my signature. Just click the link and the survey page will open. It is done online and easy. Thank u so much. Don't forget to share with your friends too.

womenwholisten:


Tried taking this survey but it's clear it's a whites vs blacks agenda. Doesn't seem like a research peculiar to birth control in Nigeria. If it is truly then I'll suggest the researcher poses questions relevant to the sample pool. Questions like access, affordability and perception.

omohayek:

Of course, for all of these to have the desired incentivizing effect in Nigeria, there would have to be in place a Nigerian government able to deliver benefits of sufficient quality for people to care one way or another about keeping them ...

Most Nigerians aren't taxed, don't get free or even subsidized government housing, have zero access to government-funded maternity health services, and are only provided with primary and secondary "schools" of such low quality that they are little more than daytime juvenile detention-centres, so why should they care what their government has to say on how many children they have? Just about the only real service the Nigerian masses get from their governments is the shoddy, intermittent maintenance of roads, which is rare enough to be repeatedly celebrated on here as evidence that "Minister X/Governor Y is working!", as if it were some sort of accomplishment.