A social media influencer, Ex-Presidential Aide and prolific author, Reno Omokri has harped on population control as a foremost panecia to resolving Nigeria’s socio-economic problem.
He wrote via X;
Please fact check me: In 1960 Nigeria’s population was under 45 million and the United Kingdom’s population was 52 million. Sixty four years later, Nigeria’s population is 220 million, while the United Kingdom’s population is 67 million. In one generation, we have multiplied by five. Meanwhile, our landmass and resources, have not multiplied by five. In some cases, they have reduced due to desertification, erosion, and deforestation.
That is the main cause of the present economic and social challenges facing the nation and especially Northern Nigeria.
Most of Nigeria’s population explosion comes from the North. From the latest UNFPA data, Northern Nigeria is growing at twice the rate of Southern Nigeria.
Population control is a taboo subject in Northern Nigeria. Anybody who mentions it can quickly become a political pariah. Politicians and religious figures will weaponise such counsel and term it as anti North. But without it, the challenges the North is facing will only grow worse.
It is a mistake to think Niger Republic has the fastest growing population in the world. The reason it looks that way is because the UNFPA combine the population growth rate of Southern and Northern Nigeria. But if you take only the population growth rate of Northern Nigeria, if is higher than Niger’s.
Some may point to China as an example of a country where population is an advantage. Actually that is a fallacy. China experienced the deaths of 55 million people from famine and poverty during the Great Leap Forward. Please fact check me.
They continued to experience stagnated and episodic economic growth until they introduced the world’s most drastic population control policy called the One Child Policy in 1979, limiting couples to one child only throughout their lives.
Because of that policy, their GDP steadily began to grow faster than their population, until they became the world’s second largest economy today.
As long as Arewa’s population is Growing faster than her regional economy, Northern Nigeria will never be economically and socially stable. And I urge people whose stock in trade is to get outraged on behalf of the North when people from Southern Nigeria speak this truth to please contain their manufactured anger. Truth is bitter but better. Do not reduce yourselves to the nzobu nzobu level of Obidients and start insulting those who tell you the truth.
Please investigate my family and I. My late father and I are well known for our love and dedication to Arewa. Not by mouth. But with time, money and political capital. Northern Nigeria needs to hear this truth. Because if Northern Nigeria is not stable, Nigeria will not be stable. And if Nigeria is not stable, much of West Africa will not be stable.
Sadly for Arewa, they had Buhari. Buhari is a curse to Arewa. Also to Nigeria as a whole..
For eight years Buhari did not build schools for the North and was rather focused on building railways to Niger Republic because of his familial relationship with that country. Look, Niger Republic’s GDP is $15 billion. Fact check me. It makes no economic sense to build a $2 billion railway with money borrowed from China to an economy with a $15 billion GDP. It would have made better economic sense to build schools in every village of Northern Nigeria, because educated people produce more economic output and reproduce less children.
The answer is for Arewa to initiate population control strategies and strictly enforce them. No Southerner can initiate this. It will be greeted with suspicion by the North. Only the North can do this. If our population continues to grow faster than our economy, it may get to a stage where war might even break out. These are just economic realities. It does not mean Reno Omokri hates the North. May God judge any Munafiqun who will twist my words to mean that.