Nigeria's Crises Could Be Worse In Future: Can We As Individuals Be Different?

By Olohy Ejembi


It's no longer a news to talk about the threatening growth of Nigerian population. Nigeria currently has the seventh largest population in the world and it is one of the fastest growing, at the rate of 2.8% per annum. Last year, the country's population was estimated at 200,962,417 and it was producing in excess of 13,000 babies per day. At this current rate and advancement in technology, it is projected that Nigeria will surpass the population of the United States by 2050 to become the third most populous country in the world, next to China and India. In the next 10 years, the population of Nigeria will reach 258 million and she will remain one of the youngest countries in the world with a median age of just 19 years.

With the way Nigeria has been like a dead boby, decaying every day since its Independence, we don't need to ask ourselves whether its government is planning to build an economy that will feed the third largest population by the year 2050, or whether the government is generating jobs that will match the over 13,000 babies per day. In fact, its pettish, sentimental and nepotic politics shall increase overwhelmingly.

Nigeria is resignedly waiting to be grouped among the worlds poorest countries like Haiti and Burundi, because its government is not ready to stem this population explosion or build a better country. The army of budding unemployed population may surpass two-third of the population by then.

Therefore, can we as individuals, on our own, do something to minimize these threatening projections? Can we as individuals improvise a solution that we can promulgate in our families, our private schools, our private organizations, our local communities, etc. to produce a class of well-informed and self-sufficient youths that will build a society which will be better than the projected Nigeria? What judgement will posterity hold about us? Will posterity judge us as people who knew about a worse future and did nothing to change it? Let us try to do something to prepare our children, our families, our colleagues, our communities, etc. against this future that Nigeria is about to enter.

I know that there are people who are not troubled, because they believe that the world will end before then. I hear that around me everyday. But I will like to remind us that this year marks about 1,987th year, beginning after the death of Jesus, that Christians began to mark as the end times, but the world goes on. We recall reading the part of the bible where the Thessalonians stopped farming and planting because they believed that the end had come. Let us do our parts to change the world, instead of resigning for end times, or it will get worse just as it got for the Thessalonians and the end never came in their time.

We should be happier if we can change the world today, even if it will end tomorrow.