Open letter to the Nigerian president-elect and all elected officials

SUNDAY ADELAJA FROM PREMIUM TIMES

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.