He said there is also the implication of unemployment, and poor resource utilisation, adding that the population was growing more than the resources could cope with. Emmanuel Lufadeju, National Coordinator of the Rotary Action Group for Reproductive Maternal and Child Health (RMCH), has said the implications of Nigeria’s population growth rate would translate to poverty if nothing is done to address it. He said it was even more worrisome that 70 per cent of the over 200 million people in Nigeria were under the age of 30.

Garba said apart from the recent launch of documents by the federal government, there were no tangible efforts by the government to ensure the FP 2030 is achieved so as to put the country’s population under check. The federal government formally launched the 2030 FP commitment in March this year, in Abuja. He advised the federal government to redouble its efforts in its determination to achieve the Family Planning (FP) 2030 commitment. He said the way out is to invest in family planning to manage the population and also “Be innovative to use the ‘youth bulge’ to its advantage by keeping them engaged with productive jobs that will support economies such as Information Communication Technology (ICT) and agriculture. The report advises countries with aging populations to take steps to adapt public programmes to the growing proportion of older persons, including by improving the sustainability of social security and pension systems and by establishing universal health care and long-term care systems.ĭr Aminu Magashi Garba, Coordinator Africa Health Budget Network (AHBN), warned that the country’s population would lead to food scarcity, fewer jobs, jobless youths and insecurity and hunger and poor health indices. It projects that the global population aged 65 years or above will rise from 10 per cent in 2022 to 16 per cent in 2050. The report indicates that the population of older persons is increasing both in numbers and as a share of the total. “Rapid population growth makes eradicating poverty, combatting hunger and malnutrition, and increasing the coverage of health and education systems more difficult,” he added.Įxperts worry as Nigeria becomes 6th most populous country “The relationship between population growth and sustainable development is complex and multidimensional,” said Liu Zhenmin, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. It states that, globally, more men (50.3 per cent) exist than women (49.7 per cent) in 2022 but the figure is projected to slowly be equaled over the course of the century thus by 2050, it is expected that the number of women will equal the number of men. While saying that the global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950, having fallen under one per cent in 2020, the World Population Prospects 2022 also states that fertility has fallen markedly in recent decades for many countries. It quoted the UN’s Secretary-General, António Guterres, as saying, “This year’s World Population Day falls during a milestone year when we anticipate the birth of the earth’s eight billionth inhabitant. It added that the world population projection would reach its peak of around 10.4 billion people during the 2080s and to remain at that level until 2100. While stating that its latest projections suggest that the world’s population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050, it said countries of sub-Saharan Africa were expected to contribute more than half of the figure to become the world’s most populated sub region. The report says Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania will account for more than half of the global population in 2050. The country is also projected to become the 4th most populous with a 375m population by 2050. The report, which was released in commemoration of World Population Day shows Nigeria also moved from the 10th most populous country in 1990 with 94m people to become the 6th most populous nation in 2020 with 216m people.

Most populous country in the world