Does Nigeria really have 120 million people, a figure that has been bandied about now for several years? Do all these Nigerian ethnic groups who claim to be in the tens of millions actually that many? One way to find out would be to conduct an honest census. That has never happened. Another way would be to institute the identity card project, whose sole function to date has been the provision of an (legal) avenue for the squandering of Nigeria’s (correctly stated, the Niger Delta’s) money. But some people oppose this project for obvious reasons. It might actually shed light on past British misinformation that have been repeated so often that some people tend to believe it as gospel. Well, for enquiring minds, there is another way to arrive at a figure – one probably more accurate than any census that Nigeria can conduct. How, you ask?

When you graduate from engineering school and are lucky enough to land a job with an established engineering firm, you are likely to encounter older colleagues, very experienced in the practice of engineering. As a new graduate, your head will be brimming with knowledge of differential equations, tensors and all the mathematics that you have been taught. A problem is bound to come up at least once, where your excitement for the opportunity to display your knowledge is tempered by the astute quick solution proffered by an experienced engineer based upon a simple back of the envelope calculation. It is amazing how close to the actual answer experience can lead to even before all the rigorous differential equations are calculated. So, let us perform a little back of the envelope estimation of Nigeria’s population. This is an order-of-magnitude estimation.

Assume that sometime in the past the figure published as the population of the country was fairly accurate. The problem then becomes one of estimating how that population grew from that base point to today’s elusive figure, the object of our exercise. For obvious reasons, we can assume also that the population of the United States is a fairly accurate number. So, if we also take the figure of the US population in the base year that we assume Nigeria’s population was fairly representative of its true value, knowing the results of the US census figures in the elapsed period till today, we can plot a graph of the growth of the US population. Judicious adjustments of the gradient (slope) of this graph could give us a gradient for the Nigerian curve. Knowing one point and applying this gradient, an estimate of the population today can be arrived at.

How do you adjust for the differences between the two countries? It is fair to assume that the birth rate in the US was lower than in Nigeria. It is fair to assume that infant mortality in Nigeria is higher than in the US. Nigeria experienced a pogrom and a civil war in the sixties, which are bound to lower the birth rate of Nigerians. At the same time, America lost 58,000 young men and women in Viet Nam. Add to that an assumed greater number of abortions in the US. From personal observation, I state that the average life span in Nigeria is fifty years, give or take a few. This compares very unfavorably with about seventy-five years in the United States. When one sums all these up, the logical conclusion is that the gradient for Nigeria should be less steep than the American one. That is to say, Nigeria’s population should grow at a slower rate than that of the USA.

After this exercise, we must find another way to validate or assess the quality of the number we have arrived at. One good way is to take an American state like Texas and examine its population density. I pick Texas because it is most like Nigeria. There is oil in the Gulf Coast. They raise cattle statewide. The topography changes with reasonable similarity as you move from the coast northward and westward towards Oklahoma and New Mexico. The State of Kansas is mostly agrarian, specializing in wheat. These two states together are about the same size as Nigeria. We can assess the reliability of our calculated number by analyzing these two States population densities. Now let us apply some figures.

I gathered population figures for the USA quite easily. I chose to start at 1900 to the present. For Nigeria, I took figures from old Nigerian Government publications and also consulted our resident historian (Dr. Mobolaji Aluko of Howard University) for more. The US Census Bureau estimates for Nigeria were also used. However, figures for Nigeria were not as plentiful as for the USA.

The shape of the curve for the USA could be explained. The heavy immigration at the beginning of the 20^th century, the first world war, the Second World War, the Baby Boom years were all reflected. The Korean and Viet Nam wars were not ‘visible’ in this graph. From the 1960s the population graph exhibited a steady climb, reflecting the fact that increased immigration from Asia compensated for lower birthrates within the country. I felt fairly satisfied with what I saw.

Then I plotted the figures for Nigeria on the same graph. I distinguished between the actual census figures (from 1954 on) and the data taken from the United States’ census department’s statistical estimates for Nigeria. Something stood out immediately. By 1964, the reported census figure was higher than the US estimate. By the 1990s, there was a significant increase in the slope for Nigeria. That is, the population was growing at a much faster rate than up to 1982. In the same period, the US population increase was linear. When I attempted to curve-fit Nigeria’s data, an exponential function gave the best fit (R-Square = 0.999). The thing about exponential time functions is that they get very big in very short times. This struck me as odd.

It is a fact that from the mid 1980s probably till today, Nigeria saw a mass exodus of people while the lines of people seeking entry visas at US embassies around the world were notoriously long. It is a fact that Nigeria’s per capita income declined in this period. Public hygiene and public health vanished. Infrastructure deteriorated and the general standard of living declined to below colonial times. How then could Nigeria’s population be growing faster than the USA’s, polygamy notwithstanding? I had reached what Fela called a stalemate!

Nigeria is the size of Texas plus Kansas. The population of the two went from 17.3 million in 1990 to 23.5 million in 2000 - an increase of 6.2 million in areas with decent health care and higher life expectancy. Kansas lost population while Texas gained to become the second most populous State. Texas lost population in Western Texas (cattle country) and gained in central Texas (Silicon Hill). In the same period, Nigeria’s population was estimated to have grown from 65 million to 117 million – an increase of 51 million! While Texas plus Kansas posted a 36% increase in population; Nigeria posted a 78% increase. What do these data suggest about Nigeria?

Imagine if half of all the people in the USA were suddenly forced to move to Texas and Kansas. Do you think that you could still drive between Houston and Dallas and still see nothing but cow pastures as you do now? How many huge metropolitan areas do you think would spring up overnight? A metro area as defined here has several million people. Do we have that many metro areas in Nigeria? How many metro areas do you see as you drive from Borno to Sokoto? How many exist from Lagos to Calabar? How about from Ilorin to Jos or Port Harcourt to Kano?

I had set out to find a year in which Nigeria’s population figure could be considered fairly accurate. I did not find one. Recent revelations of British Shenanigans in Nigeria further convinced me that such a figure does not exist. Consequently, I did not have the point from which to use the slope from USA data to estimate Nigeria’s figure. The population figures for Nigeria is GIGO – garbage in and garbage out. I do not want to hear these huge numbers bandied about anymore. We truly do not know how many we are. Definitely, Nigeria does not have 100 million citizens.

As a brief aside, I have read that the British collected more taxes from the North than from the East in days gone by. This is easy to explain. It does not translate to more people in the North than in the South. No! No one likes to pay taxes, especially to an imperialist government. The British won the battle for the conquest of the South but the Southerners were in no mood to make their stay easy. My guess is that they could not collect the taxes in the East as easily as they did in the North because Easterners could hide from the tax collector. Why do I guess this? Because I remember where the people who used to brew gin from palm wine used to hide when the British discouraged local production so they can sell us their Johnny Walker whiskey and Gordons Gin. They dubbed our Kai Kai ‘illicit gin’. The taxes collected from the North were used for the good of the British – not the Southerners. Whatever infrastructures they built in the South were destroyed by Babangida and Abacha.

If you are as disappointed, as I was, that I did not come up with a believable estimate for Nigeria’s population, I have a request to make of you. Join me to write to President Obasanjo to put some backbone in INEC to conduct an honest census before the next election. The identity card project should proceed without further delay. Let whoever is many be many. Whoever is few, be few. But we can not delay the generation of accurate numbers to use in our planning anymore.

I have suggestions that will help reduce population inflation in Nigeria. The first one is that we must impose a tax on all Nigerians, called the citizenship tax. This is a tax you pay for being a citizen of Nigeria. When everyone pays this tax, then the people will be empowered to ask public servants to give account of the country’s monies in their care. Today, the officials do not believe they owe us accountability because they think none of us sweats for the oil revenue. When the citizen can ask, "what have you done with MY tax money?" then office holders will be held accountable. This citizenship tax is to be collected by the States and paid to the Federal Government. It goes without a saying that the more people in a State, the more of this tax they have to pay. In fact, this will also lessen the opposition to the identity card.

So now, the question is, would all these ethnic groups, which claim to be in the tens of millions jump to the front of the line to pay citizenship tax for their tens of millions of people? Or will we suddenly find that their numbers will shrink to below what have been reported for so called minority ethnic groups? The question of Nigeria’s huge population don jam taxation answer for road. Wetin go shele?

Now here is a new taxation slogan for the new Nigeria. If God can do with 10%, so should the Government: 5 – 3 - 2. This means that aside from the citizenship tax, everyone has to pay income tax to the Federal (5%), State (3%), and Local (2%) Governments. This sums up to 10%. The Bible says that God requires 10% Tithes to be paid to Him. With this 10%, He takes care of the whole world. The Government should also be limited to 10%. This might just make the officials more responsible. This 10% does not eliminate normal duties (e.g. customs) that governments levy.

Now the final suggestion is this. We end revenue sharing. All resources will be controlled locally. A certain agreed upon percentage would be due to the Federal Government for running the Central Government. The temptation to be in control of the center so as to loot the peoples’ wealth will be eliminated. The Federal Government can execute projects in any State at any time. It can use incentives to goad States to adhere to any federally mandated behavior. An example (in the United States} is the withholding of highway development funds from a State with too high a speed limit or too young an alcohol drinking age. The States that follow the Federal guidelines get the money to improve or build more roads. No more Monkey de work Baboon de chop!

So the conclusion is that the population of Nigeria is GIGO – Garbage in and garbage out. It is time for us to do ourselves a favor and actually do an accurate count of the populace so that we can effectively plan the development of the country.

 Nigerian Publius

Copyright 2001