The most populous Black nation in the world appears to be bursting in the seams, making its numbers felt around the globe. The agency authorized to keep tabs on head-count in the country, the National Population Commission, NPC, says Nigeria’s current population is 198 million with urban population growing at an average annual growth rate of about 6.5 per cent
The Chairman of the NPC, Mr. Eze Duruiheoma, stated this in New York on Wednesday while delivering Nigeria’s statement on Sustainable Cities, Human Mobility and International Migration at the 51st UN Session of the Commission on Population and Development.
Mr. Duruiheoma echoed what everyone already knows, “that Nigeria remains the most populous in Africa, the seventh globally with an estimated population of over 198 million”.
However, some economic analysts are worried about the recent prediction that by 2050, Nigeria will become the third most populated country in the world. They noted that the rate of growth in the urban population has not been matched with a commensurate increase in social amenities and infrastructure.
A report said that concerned African-Americans in New York wanted the NPC boss to look at the figures of young Nigerians, teenagers and adolescents, women of childbearing age and the working age population – the population mostly engaged in urbanization and migration
It said that while Africans and Blacks in the Diaspora relish Nigeria’s sheer population growth, the trend in urbanization poses critical challenges to securing the sustainability of its cities, especially the provision of basic amenities to keep the masses productive. They noted that while the population grows in leaps and bounds, Nigerian city dwellers wallow in poverty, unemployment and decadence. Worst of all, there is the problem of insecurity as well as inadequate and inequitable health care services for adolescents and women of child-bearing age.
These concerns were highlighted by the world’s richest man and indefatigable campaigner for the provision of adequate healthcare for all humanity, Bill Gates, when he visited Nigeria last month.
