₦airaland Forum

kasiem:
A question for all yoruba bb's.
Why is it that u guys didn't support bb when he was running with an igbo man?

A more interesting question. . . why did the Igbos reject Buhari when he was running with an Igbo man?

edicolove:
those stories of the population being in the rural areas are just fraudulent. there is migration everywhere in the world. people are migrating from rural to urban areas. anyone who tells you that the larger population  stil live in the rural areas is just plain lying

100% correct. Kano State population figures are fake for that reason. I wouldn't be surprised if it has the same population as Oyo State.

namfav:
when you send your daguthers to college you don't know what they are doing, they may even have sugar daddies but one thing for certain they are having sex lol, so why not just allow them to marry and have a sense of responsibility, god rewards those that take responsiblity

I'll hire spies and make sure they don't. Or send 'em to a women's college

Actually. . . hopefully I don't have any daughters, so I won't ever have to worry about this issue :] Sons only. . . less wahala

Nchara:
4. Wealth was skewed. Anambra and Imo, Delta and Akwa Ibom should be as purple, if not more purple than Oyo

Anambra and Imo have significant outmigration. Anambrarians collectively might have a lot of wealth. Possibly more than any other group in Nigeria. But if their wealth is outside of Anambra, then the state itself won't be the wealthiest. It isn't a map of GNP, it is a map of GDP.

jephiano:
Some dudes have been on point on dis thread, just want to add my bit
1. The time i spent in the north showed me that while the average 30 year old male and 25 year old female had 1 kid in the south,it was 2 or 3 kids for adults of similar ages in the north.

So northerners have a higher fertility rate? That might be true.

and support polygamy

Polygamy won't matter too much. There are only a limited supply of women available. If 10% of men have 4 wives each, it means LOTs of the remaining 90% of men will remain unmarried.

one many has 4 wives, then it means many men  and have no use for family planning.so their population may not be as highly  inflated in the census as we might imagine.

No family planning, sure, this means higher fertility rates. But their low health indicators suggest higher infant/child mortality rates, too.

Also the land mass is of the northern part of naija is considerable.just look at d map, the whole five SE states could be swallowed by Benue and Niger states alone. So d fact that we travel tru large land masses without seein people doesnt really mean the north doesnt have  a large indigenous population.

This makes no sense. We are no more in the 12th century. Urbanization is a significant force. It is like claiming that New York City should be less populated than Utah due to "large indigenousness population", or something.

^-- 12 is way too young to get married though. What about college? Growing up, enjoying your teenage years without obligations?

If I have daughters, earliest I'd permit 'em to marry is like after college. So 21, 22.

Largely agree.

^-- He is from Akwa Ibom, I thought?

^-- I bet once you have a daughter, if she tells you that she is "physically ready" (at age 12), you will give her a dirty slap and tell her to focus on school

No one is saying that there are not a lot of Hausa; I think everyone agrees that they are amongst the top three. The question being asked here is different. Are they #1, #2, or #3?

Although the lack of a trustworthy census (one that doesn't say a city like Lagos with 17+ million people only has 9 million, one that doesn't inflate the population of rural Kano by an order of magnitude, etc, etc) makes it hard to say definitively, one can still make an educated guess that is not too far from the truth.

My own guess at this point is Igbo #1, Yoruba #2, Hausa #3. I believe that this is a more accurate view of the world than that listed on the BBC page. As more information comes out, I'll revise this view.

That is my own feeling. I'd prefer if GEJ loses, but don't think it will be terrible if he wins.

namfav:
a girl as young as 12 has reached puberty, so there is technically nothing wrong for her to be with someone 23 or 32, use your brain

Err. What?

This DeeJay20 fella sure must be fun at parties. . . mouth is only filled with insults

aletheia:
^You are making points that a lot of people blithely overlook because they have been programmed to think in a certain way. In their bid to prove their point that the Yoruba or Igbo number more than the Hausa; they overlook the fact that there are a lot of Hausa people (Niger, Nigeria, even Ghana) Do these people live in the desert?; Whether they are more than the Igbo or Yoruba, we will never know in the absence of an accurate census that takes into account ethnicity.

But to advance puerile arguments about geography which are not in tandem with reality and history as some do in their bid to prove that Igbo or Yoruba number more than Hausa. . .smh

My arguments are not desert or geography based. Notice carefully in this thread I've not made any such arguments.

Main reason I believe what I do is because I looked at the Kano State population figures, calculuated population densities for the different LGAs. If you believe the official #s, rural Kano is more densely populated than a (major urbanized) place like New Jersey. So this suggest massive over-inflation of population in the rural parts of Kano. I've not looked at the other states in the North, but it seems likely (to me) that something similar is going on.
See this post here: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-604661.32.html#msg7727348

edicolove:
3. the reason the north is impoverished is because the monies stolen by the political class of the north is not spent to develop the north. it is stashed away abroad in countries like france, saudi and dubai. and the US too. the northern masses make it easier for these crooks because they have a belief that says when you are poor, that is your destiny and when you are rich, that is your destiny. only the educated few are breaking out of this bondage. but the political class will not want the people to really break out so they suppress them thru poor education. it is not much different from what you see in countries like syria. the truth is, in all the years the north has ruled Nigeria, the north hasnt seen very much development. there isnt much business in the north. they are good farmers but their farming in still small scale compared to really sophisticated farming as seen in advanced societies. think of this, the richest man in Nigeria is a northerner, Dangote, but over 80 percent of his business is in the south. without the south, he woud not have any business. if the not is really that populated and great, why does he not take his business there.

You have a few guys like Sanusi Lamido Sanusi who seem to be true Northern patriots. I remember reading an article of his in which he says that parts of the North are poorer than Niger Republic, Chad Republic, etc 

There was a plot of unemployment data I saw. . . unemployment has decreased in several places across Nigeria since 1999, but in some parts of the North it has not improved 

Truth be told, the biggest enemy of your typical Northern man is their political leaders. Those guys do far more damage to them than southern corrupt leaders do to southerners.

4. Did you notice that when the GSM companies started in Nigeria, the north was always their last point of call. if their populationis so great, why go there last.

the report from BBC is just some wrong stuff that has been going around for a long time. the solution is a national database. thats why they will fight it. if Nigeria can develop a national database, this country will finally change. thats our biggest need. not nepa, not anything else. i know some will not agree. but there is what is called causes and effects. corruption is not a cause. NEPA is not a cause. these are effects. there is a fundamental root problem. it is that the country is built on a lie. until that changes, nothing else can really change.

It will cause Nigeria to break up, if this is done. The problem with the strategy of the Hausa leaders over the past 40 or 50 years is that they captured political power, but didn't turn this into economic power. Instead their foolish and myopic leaders just plundered money and tried to live like Arab sheikhs rather than empowering their average man.

If an accurate census is done, then his political power goes away. And he has nothing to fall back on. Who wants to be the #3 largest population group in Nigeria AND the poorest? It would be like colonization all over again. So the Hausa man sef will secede from Nigeria. . . and the rest of Nigeria would subsequently disintegrate into its various components.

@aribisala0: I know that it is more convenient to not understand the term "Hausaland." Far more advantageous for you to only understand "the North." Still, from the terms Yorubaland and Igboland, then it shouldn't be hard to get the term Hausaland as well.

@naijaking1: Almost everywhere in the world, neighbors have common ancestry (or some sort of distant kinship bond.) It is nothing special, new, or unique.

^-- Err. . . what? Hausaland. . . .the territory of land in Nigeria primarily populated by Hausa ethnic stock. . . as the map on the first page of this threads talks about.

Here is another one from 1979: http://culture.chiamaka.com/images/nigeria_linguistic_1979.jpg

Are you pretending that you don't know, for some reason?

Let's not worry about the who/when/where of the middle belt for now; since Hausaland and Kanuriland are well defined territories, everything else becomes simple.

Wikipedia does a pretty fair job, I think:

Minorities in Nigeria tend to be dominated by the three largest ethnic groups, the Hausa of North and the Igbo and Yoruba of the South; the result in the Middle Belt is occasional political unity and solidarity amongst these highly differentiated peoples, an example being the United Middle Belt Congress that emerged following Nigeria's independence from Britain in 1960.
Areas of Nigeria which are generally referred to as belonging to the Middle Belt are: Kwara State, Kogi State, Benue State, Plateau State, Nasarawa State, Niger State, Adamawa State and Taraba State. Also included are the southern parts of Kaduna State, Zuru area of Kebbi State, Tafawa Balewa and Bogoro areas of Bauchi State, Tangale and Waja areas of Gombe State and the southern parts of Borno State (Biu area).

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

Basically, Northern Nigeria minus Hausaland, minus Kanuriland.

@odumchi, EzeUche, OnlyTruth: Sounds plausible, but I'm not sold. Fortunately I have a copy of Igbo History and Society: The Essays of Adiele Afigbo, which will hopefully have some answers.

@fstranger: I hope you see why I don't care too much if Igbos are #1 in pop or #3. If you think about it a bit. . . in neither situation do we lose. If you are #1, unless that #1 is a strict majority, it only places a target on your back.

@aribisala0: How much of that food production comes from Hausaland versus the middle belt? I thought most of it is grown in the middle belt?

fstranger rawks

Wonder how much d'banj got paid by GEJ

somebody with photoshop skills should modify this T-shirt appropriately for the ACN candidate: http://urbanlookout.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/freeti.jpg

[quote author=Kilode?! link=topic=639019.msg8054157#msg8054157 date=1301975502]^^ Too bad they can't 'preciate the slow Yoruba "Krumping" those guys were doing @ 3:45. Classic! AA's borrowed it for us. [/quote]

EzeUche:
It is hard to use Western views on civilization and the progress of humanity for all people around the world. The Igbo were just different in how our society and civilization rose. Igbos chose to live in numerous villages instead of forming large towns. That is how our society developed.

It isn't Western views, though. It applies everywhere. . . Europe, Asia, Africa, Inca Empire, etc, etc. Great peoples build sophisticated societies. Major towns, cities. . .trade centers. Something. Conquer a bunch of land. Make their imprint on their environs known. "Numerous villages" doesn't really fit that pattern. That is why I think something happened in the 1800s.

Probably someone like PhysicsQED who knows Nigerian history (and might know Igbo history) will know the answer. Hopefully he posts.

EDIT: Anyway, this new direction is a major derailment of the thread. So I'll stop now.

EzeUche:
The Igbo population has always been large. Even during the height of the slave trade, there will still plenty of Igbos. We Igbos were impacted greatly by slavery, in which many Igbos were taken from our shores. I am pretty sure if they were not taken, that Igbos would be the most numerous group in Africa in general. Large families are quite common amongst the Igbo. Even educated Igbos often have large families. My father and mother are well educated and they had 5 children.

After the war as well, there was a sudden boom in Igbos being born. Many Igbos seen that they had to repopulate in order to replace those who were lost.

But how could you have been so numerous and still not had any structures on the ground in the 1700s and 1800s? Or 1600s? Especially in such a small piece of land? No major cities to speak of? Places like Oyo have been known to non-Africans for a long time. Kano has likely been known by Arabs, North Africans, possibly Europeans since like the 1200s. Why no comparable city in Igboland in even the 1500s or 1600s?

That is why I think something changed recently, within the past 150 years. Maybe you guys farmed some poor agricultural product, then through trade got one that thrived a lot more. Something like this would lead to a population explosion.

@Ileke-Idi: My granddad had a ton of kids. And I remember talking to this 37 year old cab driver from Offa (in Kwara.) He said his dad had like 25+ children

I think in Yorubaland in the olden days, kids would just die a lot when young from common ailments. Healthcare was very poor then? Now it is relatively much better, so much less dying from ordinary childhood ailments. This is something that would lead to huge population growth.

Perhaps something similar happened in Igboland. Another thing too. . . they didn't really expend as much energy in the 1600s, 1700s as we did on empire building/warfare. So perhaps naturally this would lead to more resources just on farming, feeding, and increasing population? Too bad we don't have demographics from that time period.

Question for Igbos I have: How and why are there so many of you? What exactly caused it? Was there some sort of population explosion after you guys started interacting with the white man? I don't think you guys could have been the most numerous ethnic group in the 1700s or so. . . otherwise you'd have had more structures on the ground (major cities, etc.) So I'm kind of curious what happened.

Or maybe less negatively affected by the slave trade. . . ? I dunno.

alj uche:

Every day in southern Nigeria, almost 2 mn cubic feet of natural gas is burnt during crude oil production, more than is flared anywhere else in the world. In fact, Nigeria is endowed with the tenth largest proven natural gas reserves, and according to the World Bank, gas flared in Nigeria is equivalent to total annual power generation in sub-Saharan Africa.

http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol13no1/gas.htm

And this is just the gas flared alone! No new exploration.

[quote author=tpiah! link=topic=638961.msg8053824#msg8053824 date=1301968091]so which first world country do you know without nuclear power.[/quote]That is not really relevant. More important to look at what %age of their power is generated from nuclear. Anyway, Nigeria is a 3rd world country right now, so has different needs from a 1st world one.

You can probably do 500 GW of electricity from just natural gas. I don't know, I've not done the calculations. We are only at 4 GW right now. How about we worry about going nuclear 50 or 100 years from now when we are at 500 GW?

[quote author=tpiah! link=topic=638961.msg8053813#msg8053813 date=1301967870]nuclear power seems to be an important requirement for building an advanced economy.[/quote]False.

regular power supply, etc.

True.

^-- yes, gas reserves of naija are enough to not only power the country, but all of West Africa.

I'm against nuclear because I don't see why it is necessary when we have a cheaper, safer option.

I don't want some accident to happen where nuclear waste destroys some entire state and wipes out alls its people. Or gives them all cancer.