Nigeria’s Growing Population Is An Asset – Economics Teacher

Mr. Lukman Abdulraheem, an Economics teacher at the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, has described Nigeria’s growing population as an asset.

He told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Thursday that population expansion should be encouraged and not seen as a liability since it signified an increase in human capital asset of the country.

“For those who see the population increase as liability, of course, they will only be seeing the negative; but for those who see population increase as asset, of course, they will get benefits.”

Abdulraheem said that the failure of past leaders to plan resulted in the public’s negative perception of population growth as a liability.

He called on the Federal Government to harness the country’s large population as obtained in some densely-populated countries for the overall development of the country.

“China has the largest population in the world, yet nobody is going hungry; nobody is sleeping outside – in the open. The reason is that they have strategic plan and they follow the strategic plan from generation to generation; from one government to another. But in Nigeria; we don’t plan.”

Abdulraheem also urged government to rise to its responsibility by being visionary and focused.

“Even if we reduce the population of Nigeria by half, we will still have problems of housing and infrastructure because we don’t plan.”

He described as unfortunate the inability of the country to establish its exact population, saying that the situation contributed to unplanned development.

The Economic teacher said that a country that could not determine the population of its employed and the unemployed; youths and adults, children and the old, the dead and the newborn, would find it difficult to develop.

Abdulraheem condemned the situation where ethnic groups and states inflated their population figures to get more allocation of resources from the central government than others.