The current population of Nigeria is more than 191 million people and projected to increase to over 411 million in 2050.
This is scary, because a nation that cannot control the population will not be able to manage the resources for sustainable development.
Family planning is the only solution for population control. But the poor masses who are the most vunerable Nigerians don't practice family planning. They breed many children they cannot feed and cannot afford their formal education. That is why according to the UNICEF, more than 10.5 million children are out of school in Nigeria, which is the worst record in the world. The Ministry of Education reported that 50% of the cumulative 20 million out of school children in the world are in Nigeria.
Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel laureate and champion of girl education has said we should declare a state of emergency for the education of the alarming population of more than 6 million underprivileged girls out of school in the country.
The humanitarian emergency will be beyond our control if we don't stop the poor majority from overbreeding.
The prediction of The Population Bomb by Prof. Paul R. Ehrlich of Stanford University in 1968 has already exploded with mass starvation of millions of humans due to overpopulation.
There is now a global emergency on hunger with over 870 million people who don't have enough food to eat. And millions of poverty stricken Nigerians are starving in the north east, because of drought and the terrorist attacks of the Boko Haram insurgents.
If we cannot control our population, we cannot secure the future of our nation. The federal government should launch a nationwide family planning programme for the poor low income workers and discourage them from starting families if they cannot afford the education and welfare of children.
~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima, author of "The Prophet Lied", "In the House of Dogs" and other books.
https://www.amazon.com/author/ekenyerengozimichaelchima.
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