Thread by @wFalabede

According to the population projection data on NBS website, Nigeria’s population hit 187.3 Million in 2015. Using the annual growth rate of 3.2% projected in the same document, total number of people living in Nigeria by the end of 2023 will be 241.1 million.

Nigeria would have added almost 54 million people to our population between 2015 and 2023. The 29% increase in 8 years is a growth rate that is not sustainable. In other words we will add twice the population of Ghana

@sarnchos called on the government to do something about our population growth. @XperiencSwtness argued that we can not put the blame squarely on the govt. @deezer234 just wanted more publicity

https://twitter.com/sarnchos/status/1125788189686472705

If you notice from the beginning, I used 3.2% growth rate provided by National Population Commission. Data from World Bank on the other hand projected our growth rate to be 2.6%. At that rate, we would be 230 million by 2023. reason @oluwole_dada called for taming the growth rate

The 2006 population census put us at 140M people. Ever since then we have had to use projections to calculate our population. The astronomical increase in our population led to @yinkanubi question "Are we really 200 million?" To be continued in a few hrs

https://twitter.com/yinkanubi/status/1115558211606720512

The purpose of this thread is not to answer @yinkanubi question but to delve into what could be achieved in terms of our economic growth if we could successfully limit the population growth rate to 1% per annum.

Some have argued that our population is an asset. They are only focusing on the potential purchasing power and human capital. They are ignoring the population structure which tilted heavily towards the youngest and non-working citizens who are dependent on the working population.

What they are missing is that Nigeria’s population pyramid presents a dependency problem that makes it impossible to harness the advantages inherent in our population.

The middle of the Nigeria population pyramid is supposed to support the non-working population but in this case, it is too low to support the non-working population at the bottom of the pyramid. See example of Netherland in image 2

A calculation of the age dependency ratio showed that it is about 88%. Which means for every 100 people in the working age group (15-64), there are 88 dependents (0-14 & 65 above).

These are too many dependents to the working population. As you can see, this will not help the economy as many posited. The burden will be too great on the working population to achieve any meaningful development.

Those working will be financially pressured due to the burden of dependency. In comparison, most developed countries record a dependency ratio of fewer than 25 dependents to 100 workers. Low dependency ratio allows the economy to save their excess for investment.

The other problem is that even if we are able to bring the birth rate under control right now, our population will continue to grow rapidly for years before it subsides.

The structure of our population is heavily tilted towards the younger population and as they reach childbearing age, even if they are not procreating at a higher rate, the fact that they are in their millions will still lead to a disproportionate rise in our population.

Some of the factors responsible for high population growth in Nigeria?
Economic -
The historically high infant mortality rate.
Religion
The cultural preference for the male child -
High fertility rate -

What we can do to help reduce the population growth rate

Helping more women take up a higher role and status in society.
Stop discriminating against girls in education.

Policies that results in an increase in family income either by employment or income distribution programmes that eliminate the need for school-age children to be part of the workforce. The FGN is already doing some of this.

Availability of public health care (PHC) to all citizens especially the vulnerable will help reduce infant mortality. Reduction in infant mortality means parents will not need to have too many children with the hope that some will survive. This is usually the case in villages.

Social security programme for the elderly so that children will no longer be seen as social security insurance. This will go a long way to discourage citizens from having more children than they can cater for.

Education. Education. Education. Most educated people will likely care more about the resources their children have access to rather than the number of children.

What if we can't control our population growth rate?

The population is projected to continue growing at a rate of 3.2% annually. While the GDP only grew by 1.8% in 2018. What this means is that the GDP per capita will decrease compared to 2018 even if the economy grows by 3% in 2019.

We may record economic growth but more people will still fall into poverty if our population growth keeps outpacing GDP growth. We need to grow our GDP at a much faster rate while reducing the growth rate of the population.

What if the economy grows at 2.4, 4, 6, 8, 10 or 15% while holding population growth constant at an annual rate of increase of 3.2%. This is what happens to per capita income. Any rate below the population growth rate will lead to a decline in per capita income

The average growth rate of 4% represented by the darker shade of blue as seen in the graph resulted in a small increase in Per capita GDP between 2019 and 2034. In that period, per capita GDP only increases from $1948 to $2205

To more than double our per capita GDP by 2034, we will either need to reduce the population growth rate to below 1% (impossible) or grow the economy by about 10% per annum.

The same economic growth rate plotted against a 1% population growth rate tells a more positive story.

A 6% annual GDP growth will double our per capita income by 2034 while 8% will almost triple it. At 10%, per capita GDP will have risen to $7637.

The FGN should double the effort to empower low-income citizens participation in the political and economic sphere of the nation. The result will be an improvement in living standard and low birth rate. Until this is done, sustainable growth will be almost impossible.