OCTOBER 31, 2011, was marked as the Day of Seven Billion, when the human population symbolically reached seven billion. Some experts have asserted that at the current stage of human advancement and food production techniques, Planet Earth can support 10 billion people. But United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon has said that Baby Seven Billion, was born at a time the human family was caught in terrible contradictions. Some very rich members of the human family enjoy the fruits of the huge advances in medicine and food production while a significant proportion has no access to those benefits to an acceptable extent and remains poor. That description fits Nigeria quite well as the majority of Nigerians lie betwixt and between because, while they may not be deemed to be starving, they do not boast of adequate nutrition either.On October 31, 2011, Nigeria's population was projected to be 167 million. That made Nigeria the world's sixth most populous country. Because of lingering doubts in some quarters about the true size of the national population, the National Population Commission (NPC) seized the occasion of the commemoration of the seven billionth human being to claim that the 2006 census achieved a standard that future censuses should endeavour to match. Sadly, the NPC failed to maintain the standard five years on. Since the tenure of the 25 retiring NPC commissioners who had helped chalk the said census feat, it relied on projections to tell the national population as at October 31, 2011. The integrity of a population census is impacted by post-enumeration checks including vital registration figures. The NPC blamed inadequate funding for achieving till date only 40 per cent vital registration coverage made up 2,733 vital registration centres in the 774 local government areas.On the contrary, the NPC could have stretched the available funds to effect complete national coverage with ease. The census captured inter alia information on the identity and location of government and private hospitals, clinics, traditional birth attendant parlours, as well as village and clan heads in all enumeration areas. Nationwide records of deaths and births for updating the 2006 census date could have been collected cheaply through a formal arrangement for NPC field staff radiating from any of its registration centres to pay regular visits to designated establishments and village/clan heads in order to gather information on deaths and births. Government data collection agencies should employ cost-saving methods by cultivating the participation of locals and grassroots private establishments (at token stipends) so as to engender public confidence and guarantee completeness of data collected. With the 2006 census bequeathing no consistent vital registration guide-posts, the next national population census due in 2016 would have to begin from scratch and many Nigerians would still look up to it to confirm or dispel any lingering preconceptions.It took the arrival of Baby Seven Billion for the NPC and the Senate to remind themselves that traditional predisposition to uncontrolled procreation could be checked through aggressive public enlightenment campaigns and that such campaigns were necessary to promote the 2004 National Population Policy requiring every woman to limit her children to a maximum of four. But what is required is concrete action. There should be put in place government machinery cutting across all tiers of government for all-year-round enlightenment campaigns to sell the benefits of child spacing and observing the set limit to family size. Such campaigns would dispel the degree of ignorance that associates preventive vaccination against infant diseases with secret birth control schemes. Even clerics of all religions would be a boon to widening the reach of the enlightenment effort. Government should persuade clerics to purge themselves of antediluvian teachings about unrestrained procreation and to instead guide their followers to embrace acceptable forms of birth control in order to keep their family sizes within their means. Government should also learn from experience elsewhere, namely, that ensuring education to an appreciable level for all as well as lifting the populace above the absolute poverty level serves as a check on rapid population growth.Nigeria's fast growing population is already confronted by the peril of climate change, which is gnawing at parts of the habitable land area through desertification to the north and the rising sea level to the south. To counter the threat, the Federal Government and governments of states of the federation that fall in the Sahel savannah belt should implement intense afforestation programmes without ceasing and halt the southward advance of the Sahara Desert. To the south, rigorous enforcement of existing laws stipulating non-polluting oil production techniques and reduction in gas flaring would eliminate widespread environmental degradation in the Nigeria Delta region. Subject to modern agricultural practices, the available arable and other agricultural land can feed the Nigerian population and provide all other agricultural requirements with products to spare. In developed economies, less than 15 per cent of the population is engaged in agriculture.Recent events in some parts of the country make it necessary to stress that Nigerians, as and when they respond to climate and industrial change, should be welcome in any part of the country they choose to settle in permanently. In that expectation, government should take steps to boost agricultural productivity as well as implement policies that advance the various sectors of the economy, create employment and enhance overall prosperity. The world's sixth most populous country should at least be the world's sixth largest economy. It is committed action in that direction that will save the country from adopting forced population control measures in the future.
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