Open letter to the Nigerian president-elect and all elected officials, By Sunday Adelaja

There is no day I read or watch a program about Nigeria that I don’t hear people expressing their frustrations on how Nigeria has failed as a nation. This sentiment is more often expressed by Nigerians themselves, especially those we regard as elites, both within and outside the country. It is this frustration of unmet expectations that has led to a myriad of national crises like, EndSars Movement, IPOB, Yoruba Nation movement for self-determination etc. It has led to societal evils like, kidnappings, Boko Haram terrorist group, armed robbery, banditry, Fulani Herdsmen terror etc.

This anger of our people is mainly blamed on bad leadership. We have been complaining about bad leadership in this country since its first day as an independent country, yet we don’t seem to be getting closer to the expected solution. While I agree that we surely have a leadership problem, I will like to point out in this article the singular reason why our standard of living has remained low, despite the best efforts of our leaders. I will also state here that even if we bring the best leaders in the world to rule Nigeria, if this particular problem is not addressed and intentionally resolved then any leader will fail to give a better standard of living to our people.

So, I’m addressing this open letter to all appointed officials of our country, especially to the lawmakers. Our lawmakers must move quickly to reduce the rate of growth of our population. Nigeria adds over 5 million newborns to our already hungry population every year. In 2022 alone we added 5.2 million people, yet we are not able to feed the already over 200 million people in our country. Our main problem as a nation is that we don’t produce as fast as our population growth, such that our productivity is several times the growth of our population. Unfortunately, for most of our years of independence, our population has always outgrown our productivity. In simple terms, if we take a family as an example, the family of 5 needs 100 dollars a month to survive, but we are trying to feed 20 people with it. That is a recipe for hunger, if the number of the family members are reduced to 3 or 4 their standard of living will be higher than that of a 20 family members even if the income remains the same 100 dollars.

We as a country need an urgent “population growth break”. We need to learn from the western world and from China. Let’s declare a “moratorium” on population growth in Nigeria. We can do this as a temporary measure maybe for the next 10-15 years, when no family should have more than 3 children or not to have more than 3 children per woman. So in this 10-15 years period we could focus on educating all our already born children, develop our human capital resources, give skills to our population, make our people more competitive on the world stage, eradicate illiteracy, develop medical facilities, build enough schools etc.

We cannot afford to leave this process for the nature to regulate things by itself automatically, this is what we’ve done so far and it’s the main reason why our people are poor. The difference between a bush and a garden is that, the bush is left to itself while the garden is tendered and constantly regulated. In gardens you cut and trim the trees, plants, grass. Hence the garden is more beautiful, more attractive. It’s the same thing with developed nations, things are monitored and regulated through various methods, either through the law or through other social economic formulas.

Please take your time to carefully read the comparison I’m providing below between the United Kingdom and Nigeria, from independence till date, it’ll help understand better the importance of the point I’m trying to make in this article.

Nigeria’s Unregulated Population Growth Is Our Albatross

Compare the achievements and track records of Nigeria to those of the great nations of the world today when they were 60 years or even when they were 100 years old as independent and sovereign countries, in particular countries like England and USA. You can only objectively assess a situation when there is something to compare it to.

If not for our unregulated population growth, Nigeria would have been assessed more highly than the tiger nations of Korea, Singapore or Taiwan, as you’ll see below.
If we had regulated our population to grow same rate as for example England we would have been living better than some countries in Europe.
Despite all our numerous failures, our results in economic growth can only be compared to that of middle belt nations of Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, and Japan. I’m presenting the facts to you here so please put aside your emotions and consider them.
In 1960 our GDP was 4 billion dollars approximately, to a population of 45 million, which means the per capita was 88 US dollars per citizen.
Today if we only take 400 billion as our GDP to 215 million people it makes our per capita to be at 2,300 US dollars. Remember this is from 88 dollars per capital at independence. How many times growth is that?
Our GDP growth is one of the highest in the history of the world, better and faster than that of America or Great Britain, 400 times, or 10.000% since independence. Remember I’m only using 400 billion as our GDP benchmark, even though we are close to 500 billion now.
The population growth since 1960 is 377% growth rate. This is the genesis of our sorrow as a nation.
Meanwhile the British population grew by only 30% in 60 years from 52.4 million to 68 million.
At the same time the per capita growth of Britain economy is 3.000%
Their GDP grew at the same period is 3.600% in Britain. Notice that their real nominal GDP growth is almost at par with their growth per capita.
If our per capita (or population) was to grow as our nominal GDP which is 10.000%, then the standard of living of our people would have increased 10.000% but unfortunately that’s not the case because our population has completely consumed our growth, such that it hardly shows in our per capita.
Our economy has grown by 800% yearly in the last 60 years. As of 1960 our GDP per capita was 88 dollars, today it is 2,300 dollars. So we have a growth of 2,500%, as against the UK with 3.000% per capita growth, while their GDP growth for some period was 3.600% growth.
Compare that to Nigeria’s GPD growth at 10.000%, if our population has grown same rate as that of Britain, our standard of living should have increased by 8000% percent as against 2,500% increase we have now.
The reason for 2,500% growth in the standard of living of our people from 1960 till now is because we didn’t control our population growth like Britain did.
Presently our population grows by 2.6% or 5 million every year, it’s a big problem that our government unfortunately is not taking seriously yet.
Meanwhile Britain is 0.5% growth in population. So what if we only grew by 30% in 60 years like Britain in our population we should be 58 million people now, meaning our standard of living would have been among the best in the world.
We could have been on the same living standards with Turkey, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil etc.
We need to maximize our human capital resources to produce at a faster rate than the population growth. If our government want a free fall population growth for Nigeria then they must work so hard as to make the economy grow at several times faster rate than the population growth.
In Nigeria only 20-25% are productively competitive in the economy, meaning these are the only skilled work force we have unlike in Europe where it stands at 75% to 90% skilled workers level.
How can we possibly compete with the world if our human capital resources is so low? No European country can function at such a low level of human capital development. Can you imagine the UK using only 30% of their working population to sustain the economy? It’ll be catastrophic for the British economy.

Sunday Adelaja is a Nigeria born leader, transformation strategist, pastor and innovator. He was based in Kiev Ukraine

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