Kilode?!:



I think the point people are making about industrialization and pop is that an increased access to jobs brought about via industrialization might reduce the need to have more kids. Hence slowing down pop. Growth.

This can be true.  

1. If industrialization lead to more women getting jobs, and it should  (a) they will marry much later (b) be less dependent on men (c) have less time or motivation to raise a bunch kids

This (1) example is already true in highly industrialized countries in Europe and North America. There are tons of research and examples proving this to be so.

I was under the impression that women getting married later/having kids later was due to more education? Not more jobs for women?

Can you link to any study suggesting that industrialization alone => lower pop growth?
 

2. Industrialization cannot exist in a vaccum, I'm certain other things like access to education and information, will accompany it or even catalyze it, those factors are known to cause attitudinal changes which can lead to better family planning.

Something like that is happening in brazil, where women are seeing the need to have less children as the country industrialized and provided more access to jobs and financial power for them.

Eh...again, how do you know that industrialization is responsible for the lower pop growth, rather than say the family planning you mentioned?

Having said that, yes, we cannot achieve much if we don't proactively enforce birth control policies. All these things have to work together, I'm not certain one single factor can fix this. 

I'm not against industrialization. I am for it. But I am also for family planning. And I don't think that they are the same thing.

The divide argument: 

I may be wrong, but I think the "divide and the problem will go away" point being made by PhysicsQED is based on the premise that some parts of the country have a significantly slower pop. growth than others I.e North vs South. The report also made that point. Now if that is true, then dividing it might make the problem seem less daunting, because then we have no Nigeria with x% of pop growth. The % will be considerably lower. Also, if one of the major reasons for this growth in say The North are cultural, then that becomes the problem of The North which will then be a new country.

Bottomline, we have a problem and we need to address it, there are several examples in human history to copy from. The ball is in our court really.

The divide argument doesn't really make any sense...PhysicsQED's seems to one more of perception. E.g., three 60 mil pop countries looks less bad than one 180 mil country or something. But it doesn't really solve the issue.

I'm also pro dividing Nigeria btw...but again, this in and of itself doesn't solve excessively high population growth.


In a nutshell, the best to solve this problem is to solve it directly (family planning/birth control) rather than hoping some other indirect route also solves it.

Kobojunkie:

Here's one for you to think of. If a man earns Naira 100,000 a month. Do you think his this man has a better chance at improving his lot if he had 2 kids, or 5 kids? please I would like for you to respond to this.

I thought about this before you posted this question, and the answer is yes. However, if the man in question is a drunk and a womanizer, it's irrelevant how much he earns; his children will still go to bed hungry.

Again.....nobody who is advocating population control is advocating some mass sterilization/elimination of Nigeria's population.

Nchara/nanos seemed to be confused about this point, and it appears that he is not the only one.

Reduce population growth to something more reasonable like 1-1.5% per year is basically what I'm saying, not negative pop growth.

Nebeuwa: That being said, I still think it is SELFISH for those who do not have the means to keep on producing even though they cannot provide for their children. Why would anyone want to bring any person into this world if they cannot provide for them? It is like me purchasing a dog, knowing that I would not be able to adequately take care of it. I would not set myself up for that failure.

I believe it is inhumane! Pure wickedness!

Arosa:

I thought about this before you posted this question, and the answer is yes. However, if the man in question is a drunk and a womanizer, it's irrelevant how much he earns; his children will still go to bed hungry.

yes what?

On the man being a drunk, and a womanizer, well, the man Nigeria is currently ruled by 'drunks and womanizers', in some sense, but do you think the children of the drunk, who probably only get a couple Naira from him every other week, would be better off if there were two or them sharing the change, or five of them?

I must say that even though Nigeria is overpopulated, Africa is actually underpopulated for a continent its size. It might sound crazy, but Nigerians in general need to expand past their borders. Populate the countries that are underpopulated in Africa, especially in the Southern part of Africa. The indigenous people may be against that, but that is one possible solution for Nigerians.

ekt_bear: Again.....nobody who is advocating population control is advocating some mass sterilization/elimination of Nigeria's population.

Nchara/nanos seemed to be confused about this point, and it appears that he is not the only one.

Reduce population growth to something more reasonable like 1-1.5% per year is basically what I'm saying, not negative pop growth.

You had me laughing with that statement. It seems like Nigerians believe in their freedom to procreate.

It must be their inalienable right to do so.

Come hell or high water you take that away from them.

Kobojunkie:

yes what?

yes two kids.

Nebeuwa: I must say that even though Nigeria is overpopulated, Africa is actually underpopulated for a continent its size. It might sound crazy, but Nigerians in general need to expand past their borders. Populate the countries that are underpopulated in Africa, especially in the Southern part of Africa. The indigenous people may be against that, but that is one possible solution for Nigerians.

I disagree on that one.

Africa is not underpopulated. The problem is mortality rate is very high, compared to the rest of the world.

Arosa:

yes two kids.

There you go!

Procreation is a responsibility, not a right.

When you bring kids into the world, you owe them certain things.

Having more kids than you can afford is irresponsible..

Kobojunkie:

There you go!

I did not disagree with you 100%

Kobojunkie:

I disagree on that one.

Africa is not underpopulated. The problem is mortality rate is very high, compared to the rest of the world.

Mortality rates do play a role, I will not disagree with you about that. But the fact still remains that some parts of Africa are underpopulated.

Namibia, Botswana and Gabon are a few African nations that I feel that are underpopulated and can support a march larger population.

That being said, I think there should be a limit on how many children Nigerians should have.

Nebeuwa:

Mortality rates do play a role, I will not disagree with you about that. But the fact still remains that some parts of Africa are underpopulated.

Namibia, Botswana and Gabon are a few African nations that I feel that are underpopulated and can support a march larger population.

That being said, I think there should be a limit on how many children Nigerians should have.

Namibia , and Botswana are AIDS hell holes. So I don't think what the two need right now is an increase in population. More like serious improvement in their healthcare system there, and AIDS awareness.

Namibia has a population of 2.1 million people and a stable multi-party parliamentary democracy. Agriculture, herding, tourism and the mining industry – including mining for gem diamonds, uranium, gold, silver, and base metals – form the backbone of Namibia's economy. Given the presence of the arid Namib Desert, it is one of the least densely populated countries in the world. Approximately half the population live below the international poverty line, and the nation has suffered heavily from the effects of HIV/AIDS, with 15% of the adult population infected with HIV in 2007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namibia

Like elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, the economic impact of AIDS is considerable. Economic development spending was cut by 10% in 2002–3 as a result of recurring budget deficits and rising expenditure on healthcare services. Botswana has been hit very hard by the AIDS pandemic; in 2006 it was estimated that life expectancy at birth had dropped from 65 to 35 years.[27]
The prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Botswana was estimated at 24% for adults in 2006.[28] In 2003, the government began a comprehensive program involving free or cheap generic anti-retroviral drugs as well as an information campaign designed to stop the spread of the virus. Under the leadership of Festus Mogae, the Government of Botswana solicited outside help in fighting HIV/AIDS and received early support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Merck Foundation, and together formed the African Comprehensive HIV AIDS Partnership (ACHAP). Other early partners include the Botswana-Harvard AIDS Institute, of the Harvard School of Public Health and the Botswana-UPenn Partnership of the University of Pennsylvania. According to the 2011 UNAIDS Report, universal access to treatment - as defined as 80% coverage or greater - has been achieved in Botswana.[29]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botswana#HIV.2FAIDS

In my opinion, I think Africa has gotten to a point where people are have more kids,but many of them die off, from one illness or another. So, we have tons of problems to solve. Population growth can come later.

Arm chair sociologists arguing over pedantics

ekt_bear:
I was under the impression that women getting married later/having kids later was due to more education? Not more jobs for women?

Can you link to any study suggesting that industrialization alone => lower pop growth?
 


Eh...again, how do you know that industrialization is responsible for the lower pop growth, rather than say the family planning you mentioned?



I'm not against industrialization. I am for it. But I am also for family planning. And I don't think that they are the same thing.


The divide argument doesn't really make any sense...PhysicsQED's seems to one more of perception. E.g., three 60 mil pop countries looks less bad than one 180 mil country or something. But it doesn't really solve the issue.

I'm also pro dividing Nigeria btw...but again, this in and of itself doesn't solve excessively high population growth.


In a nutshell, the best to solve this problem is to solve it directly (family planning/birth control) rather than hoping some other indirect route also solves it.

I did not say industrialization is the ONLY factor, neither did I assert that Industrialization ALONE can reduce population growth.


I based my assumption on research works like these from the UNFPA http://www.unfpa.org/6billion/populationissues/demographic.htm

There on the first paragraph the suggestion is clear that the more industrialized a region becomes, the less their population grows.

You can read this also ; http://m.voanews.com/learningenglish/rss.jsp?id=3133&rssid=25266971&item=http%3a%2f%2fwww.voanews.com%2ftemplates%2fSingleArticle-mobiletech.rss%3fcontentID%3d83128752&cid=25228101&show=full

I also read and formed part of my opinion from this article on Brazil which I read months ago, You might enjoy it. Very interesting stuff.

Sample section below:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/09/girl-power/gorney-text

That new Brazilian fertility rate is below the level at which a population replaces itself. It is lower than the two-children-per-woman fertility rate in the United States. In the largest nation in Latin America[b]—a 191-million-person country where the Roman Catholic Church dominates, abortion is illegal (except in rare cases), and no official government policy has ever promoted birth control—family size has dropped so sharply and so insistently over the past five decades that the fertility rate graph looks like a playground slide.[/b]

And it's not simply wealthy and professional women who have stopped bearing multiple children in Brazil. There's a common perception that the countryside and favelas, as Brazilians call urban slums, are still crowded with women having one baby after another—but it isn't true. At the demographic center Carvalho helped found, located four hours away in the city of Belo Horizonte, researchers have tracked the decline across every class and region of Brazil. Over some weeks of talking to Brazilian women recently, I met schoolteachers, trash sorters, architects, newspaper reporters, shop clerks, cleaning ladies, professional athletes, high school girls, and women who had spent their adolescence homeless; almost every one of them said a modern Brazilian family should include two children, ideally a casal, or couple, one boy and one girl. Three was barely plausible. One might well be enough. In a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, an unmarried 18-year-old affectionately watched her toddler son one evening as he roared his toy truck toward us; she loved him very much, the young woman said, but she was finished with childbearing. The expression she used was one I'd heard from Brazilian women before: "A fábrica está fechada." The factory is closed.

The emphatic fertility drop is not just a Brazilian phenomenon. Notwithstanding concerns over the planet's growing population, close to half the world's population lives in countries where the fertility rates have actually fallen to below replacement rate, the level at which a couple have only enough children to replace themselves—just over two children per family. They've dropped rapidly in most of the rest of the world as well, with the notable exception of sub-Saharan Africa.

For demographers working to understand the causes and implications of this startling trend, what's happened in Brazil since the 1960s provides one of the most compelling case studies on the planet. Brazil spans a vast landmass, with enormous regional differences in geography, race, and culture, yet its population data are by tradition particularly thorough and reliable. Pieces of the Brazilian experience have been mirrored in scores of other countries, including those in which most of the population is Roman Catholic—but no other nation in the world seems to have managed it quite like this.

"What took 120 years in England took 40 years here," Carvalho told me one day. "Something happened." At that moment he was talking about what happened in São Vicente de Minas, the town of his childhood, where nobody under 45 has a soccer-team-size roster of siblings anymore. But he might as well have been describing the entire female population of Brazil. For although there are many reasons Brazil's fertility rate has dropped so far and so fast, central to them all are tough, resilient women who set out a few decades back, without encouragement from the government and over the pronouncements of their bishops, to start shutting down the factories any way they could.

Ekt_ bear, just to be clear, I'm not saying industrialization is the ONLY factor, I'm simply saying evidence exist showing that it is a factor. In American history they have a period commonly known as the gilded age when mass movement of people especially women from farms to cities for industrial labour jobs led to reduction in family sizes. You can google info about that. Sorry I'm a bit too tired to dig up scholarly research work now. Check jstor too.

strangerf: Arm chair sociologists arguing over pedantics

na lack of work cause am jo

@Kobojunkie and ekt_bear,
Y are you both insisting on stuff that is not practicable or enforcable?
I.E family planing in a poor under developed country?

Don't get me wrong, I am for family planning but it cannot work in an under developed country like Nigeria....or any other underdeveloped country (except china...and we all know y).

History and common knowledge has shown that countries that experience economic growth also experience a natural reduction in population growth....weather from USA to Asia to Brazil to Europe... its the same story......while poor countries have high growth rates and the reason is in the original post in case you did not see it..

Let me post it again in case you did not read it the first time

Kilode?!:
Nigeria Tested By Rapid Rise in Population
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL


There are signs that the shifting economics and lifestyles of middle-class Africans may help turn the tide, Dr. Ogunjuyigbe said. As Nigeria urbanizes, children’s help is not needed in fields; the extended families have broken down. “Children were seen as a kind of insurance for the future; now they are a liability for life,” he said.


Dr. Eloundou-Enyegue worries that Africa’s modestly declining birthrates reflect relatively rich, educated people reducing to invest in raising “quality” children, while poor people continue to have many offspring, strengthening divisions between haves and have-nots. “When you have a system with a large degree of corruption and inequality, it’s hard not to be playing the lottery because it increases the chances that one child will succeed,” he said.

In Nigeria’s desperately poor neighbor, Niger, women have on average more than seven children, and men consider their ideal to be more than 12. But with land divided among so many sons, the size of a typical family plot has fallen by more than a third since 2005, meaning there is little long-term hope for feeding children, said Amadou Sayo, of the aid group CARE.

To poor people having many children is like a lottery, one might make it and rescue the lot, preaching family planing to these set of people will have limited impact...ever wonder why rich or middle class people have fewer children than poor people?

DaLover: @Kobojunkie and ekt_bear,
Y are you both insisting on stuff that is not practicable or enforcable?
I.E family planing in a poor under developed country?

Don't get me wrong, I am for family planning but it cannot work in an under developed country like Nigeria....or any other underdeveloped country (except china...and we all know y).

History and common knowledge has shown that countries that experience economic growth also experience a natural reduction in population growth....weather from USA to Asia to Brazil to Europe... its the same story......while poor countries have high growth rates and the reason is in the original post in case you did not see it..

Let me post it again in case you did not read it the first time
To poor people having many children is like a lottery, one might make it and rescue the lot, preaching family planing to these set of people will have limited impact...ever wonder why rich or middle class people have fewer children than poor people?

Not saying it is going to be easy to get people to stop having more kids than they can fend for. However, I am of the mind that if China can do it, so can we. Even if Government has to impose a tax on people for each kid, I am all for it.

Yes, Nigeria is underdeveloped and yes, to some poor people, having kids is like playing the lottery, but at some point, the educated beings in that country need to confront this issue head on, if we ever want to enjoy that country, and have our kids enjoy it too.

However, denying the problem exists is what I am against. It exists and is reason why Nigeria may not reach any of it's development goals for the next 50 to 100 years.

Procreation is a responsibility, not a right.

Well shyting is a responsibility, not a right. All I know is that two consenting adults have the right to do whatever they want with their genitals. Its nobody's business if, when, and how people choose to procreate.

Having more kids than you can afford is irresponsible..

Having less bodies than the country can afford will lead to underdevelopment.

Kobojunkie:

Not saying it is going to be easy to get people to stop having more kids than they can fend for. However, I am of the mind that if China can do it, so can we. Even if Government has to impose a tax on people for each kid, I am all for it.

However, denying the problem exists is what I am against. It exists and is reason why Nigeria may not reach any of it's development goals for the next 50 to 100 years.

Just because you are barren doesn't mean the rest of us should live by your rules. Go get some rest Kobo, you will thank me later.

@Kobo,
The agreed problem is potential population explosion in the medium term, there is no doubt about that....

I take it that your solution is campaigns against producing unlimited children plus enforcing limits like has worked in only one country, i.e china
My Solution is to remove traditional believes, by improving economic standards trough industrialization, as has happened in several other countries..

Honestly sha both solutions are workable but
Taxing the poorest of the poor or taxing a core northern moslem for marring 4 wives and have 12 kids seams like a hard sell to me.. I believe option is a subtle way of saying Nigeria will never be industrialized.

I took my time to read every single response to this all-important issue before airing my view. I think there is one important aspect that hasn't been highlighted yet-the impact of unrestrained population growth on our environment. Rapid growth in a firewood-dependent country like ours will spell doom for our forests, since we will have to use more and more firewood to meet our energy needs (since we have failed to put our cheaply available gas to good use, hey what gives?). This will clearly abet the manifestation of the tripartite environmental evils: global warming, climate change and desertification.

As for the industrialisation argument, it may, despite its apparent success elsewhere, be a double-edged sword here because some families may eventually decide that they can afford more children. It could go both ways, really.

In a deeply religious country where contraception is still frowned upon and many families still believe it is "God's will" to have 15 children, I think the best approach will be a combination of the following: An adjustment to personal income tax that aims to penalise families who have more than 3 children, enacting and enforcing legislation to ensure ALL children (especially females) complete secondary school as well as legislation outlawing marriage before the age of 18.

The fact is, government will need to take a much tougher stance against families who choose to mass-produce children. Our population growth must be better managed, if those of us who are alive are to enjoy life in this country. There is no other way.

Oh. . . And let me add that the erosion of our forests will eventually threaten wildlife habitat. . . How I wan take dey nack bushmeat na? Lol

HNosegbe: I took my time to read every single response to this all-important issue before airing my view. I think there is one important aspect that hasn't been highlighted yet-the impact of unrestrained population growth on our environment. Rapid growth in a firewood-dependent country like ours will spell doom for our forests, since we will have to use more and more firewood to meet our energy needs (since we have failed to put our cheaply available gas to good use, hey what gives?). This will clearly abet the manifestation of the tripartite environmental evils: global warming, climate change and desertification.

As for the industrialisation argument, it may, despite its apparent success elsewhere, be a double-edged sword here because some families may eventually decide that they can afford more children. It could go both ways, really.

In a deeply religious country where contraception is still frowned upon and many families still believe it is "God's will" to have 15 children, I think the best approach will be a combination of the following: An adjustment to personal income tax that aims to penalise families who have more than 3 children, enacting and enforcing legislation to ensure ALL children (especially females) complete secondary school as well as legislation outlawing marriage before the age of 18.

The fact is, government will need to take a much tougher stance against families who choose to mass-produce children. Our population growth must be better managed, if those of us who are alive are to enjoy life in this country. There is no other way.

@bold how? set up an agency, dedicate funds, personnel's, buy hiluxes all over the place.....please lets be realistic....how do you even begin to set up machinery to tax people operating in the grey unbanked sector? OK assume you can achieve this... how do you convince moslems not to marry more than one wife or to marry 4 wives and have one child each from each....?

There is no country that has both improving economy and increasing populaation growth even lazy oil countries like Libya, Saudi and U.A.E.. it just doesn't happen.


Think about it..if you are like me a middle class guy in his 30s, working in a decent oil company, you will not see any of your colleagues having 5 children? except very few....now who told them to have less children?

@Da Lover,

That was why I mentioned the need for education to be extended, especially girl-child education. Too many female children drop out early from school, and the next thing is to become the 4th or 5th wife of some randy old aboki, after which she begins to produce children like a toy factory.

If female children are kept in school longer, coupled with legislation banning marriage below the age of 18, it will be a first step. The harder work of changing the mindsets of people will take a longer period, but for now we have to force the issue.

HNosegbe: @Da Lover,

That was why I mentioned the need for education to be extended, especially girl-child education. Too many female children drop out early from school, and the next thing is to become the 4th or 5th wife of some randy old aboki, after which she begins to produce children like a toy factory.

If female children are kept in school longer, coupled with legislation banning marriage below the age of 18, it will be a first step. The harder work of changing the mindsets of people will take a longer period, but for now we have to force the issue.

Unfortunately education is a means to an end...not an end in itself, the end game is opportunities for improved living standards, these opportunities will come where jobs are created, these jobs will come when we industrialize,

Hence no industries, no opportunities, no encouragement to go to school, no keeping girl child in school longer.

Look, you have to look at how what you are saying is going to be implemented, saying things like govt should enforce child limits and keeping girls in school sound beautiful and quick to achieve...you are asking an already overstretched corrupt government to do more, when people like me are saying the govt should hands off the plenty load it is carrying and focus on the difficult task of industrializing this country through policy formulation and enforcement....

Two questions in response:

1. For an "overstretched corrupt" government, which is easier to achieve, legislation concerning the rights of female children, or hard, long investments in building infrastructure and fixing our power sector (both indispensable to industrialisation)?

2. Can an illiterate build industries? Doesn't it take someone with at least basic education to run a successful small-scale business, talkless of an industrial conglomerate?

Don't get me wrong, I don't question the merit of your assertion. The issue, however, is what the FIRST step should be. Let's face it, industrialisation will take YEARS to achieve, because fixing our parlous infrastructure and getting rid of the structural barriers to productive business activity cannot be done overnight. In the meantime, however, we can enact the legislation I talked about, and start convincing families that having fewer children is in their best interest.

DaLover:
Honestly sha both solutions are workable but
Taxing the poorest of the poor or taxing a core northern moslem for marring 4 wives and have 12 kids seams like a hard sell to me.. I believe option is a subtle way of saying Nigeria will never be industrialized.

Well, I know we have known of this for well over 30 years. We are closer today to the break point, and we need to do something.

As much as people like to hate Northerners, there are those in the North who recognize this problem exists, and try to educate the people on having less children to improve their lives and health. Yes it is a hard sell but doing nothing is no longer an option. Our resources will not be around for much longer, and No, we do not even the oil states know that there will come a time when their oil will no longer be there for them.

In other underdeveloped countries, I guess one could say the solutions tried there have been disease, famine/drought, or war.lol . . Countries like Niger, Uganda, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Somalia , Angola etc. have some of the highest birth rates in the world. Yet, all these countries are not experiencing the increase we are.

Somalia is number 7 highest birth rate in the world, but the same country has the highest mortality rate for Children. Infact, many of the countries at the tope of the birth rate chart, are at the top as well on the highest mortality rate chart.

So at some point, we need to start something, or simply wait for famine/dought, disease, or war to help us tackle the issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate

http://www.exchangerate.com/statistics-data/birth-rate/What-is-the-birth-rate-of-Somalia.html

@HNosegbe
There is already all form of laws for female education and child marriages...but guess what...they are not working

Industrialization can be achieved when we try to skillfully manage corruption, not fool ourselves trying to eliminate it...
Nigeria is corrupt but telecoms companies are working, airlines are working, Banks are working etc...all sectors the govt got out of and decided to strictly perform it regulatory functions...

The same way power can work, oil industries, manufacturing etc, can work....10 years max we can be on the path to glory, even with a corrupt govt...but the catch is to reduce govt interference.....but if people like you keep insisting that govt should perform the roll of father christmass....sorry then

@Da Lover,

I have already said that industrialisation in itself is a double-edged sword-an illiterate who gets a job with a living wage will see it as a licence to breed more children.

Again, you did not answer my question as to whether an illiterate can build a successful business. If so, please give examples.