I stumbled upon the GIF below earlier today, and it got me thinking about the environmental and social impact of having 750 million people living in Nigeria in a hundred years.
Considering that advancements in clean-tech will continue to depress oil prices, increased automation will depress labour demand, and the recently lowered 120-point JAMB cutoff mark, all indicators point to a large, unemployed, unskilled population and a country that will be very unpleasant to live in.
China seems to be preparing early and I daresay, India as well.
Apart from āchecking out of the countryā, what is the best way to prepare?
Increasingly, the real divide we have is between the āhavesā and āhave notsā.
Wealth is getting more concentrated in a few hands and the income gap is alarmingly widening.
I think āchecking out of the countryā wonāt cut it anymore. Increasingly, the masses are feeling the pinch everywhere and will continue to lash out on immigrants that are competing with them for scarce jobs.
The best way to prepare is to be a āhaveā. Fortunately, our country is still very much untapped. The potential for wealth here is huge if one looks hard enough and is ready to put in all the work and time needed to make it happen.
Being a āhaveā opens doors everywhere. And also translates to being a āhaveā anywhere. The wealthy will always have exclusive aborts that are well, you knowā¦
Thatās how to prepare as an individual or as a family.
To prepare as a country or society, thatās another story.
I suspect we are going to get full blown, extreme-left socialism and at best, the establishment of some variant of Basic Income.
To slow down population growth and make Basic Income sustainable, we need to up our literacy rates by several orders of magnitude really quickly. Perhaps a repurposed Kahn Academy type program that anyone can participate in (in return for Basic Income credits) might do the trick.
My friends and i were talking about this last sunday.
The situation is going to be really scary, if we leave socio-economic situation as they are now. Crime rate is going to escalate and people are going to be forced to care about the decisions we make in every area - personally, financially and especially politically.
That said, i agree with you that one of the means of tackling this issue is to up our literacy levels.
Another way to tackle the consequences of a growing population in our country would be to aggressively improve infrastructure which will improve disposable income in the long run (given that Nigerians are very hardworking, if provided with the right environment - excellent and well-organised infrastructure, would create businesses that will boost their income).
Just look at China, over 1 billion people and they are doing fine. we need that kind of organisation ASAP.
The whole idea of āBasic Incomeā depends on the government generating enough revenue to be able to provide sustenance to its citizen.
At the height of the oil boom, we barely made a tent in infrastructure and werenāt able to pay our civil servants a decent salary. Even with the meagre salary, some state and sometimes even the federal government owed.
By some estimates, there are just about 2 million civil servants out of an estimated 180 million.
With low oil prices and better check in place, we are barely staying afloat and have to depend on loans. Yes, we are trying to diversify from oil but so far our efforts donāt seem to be having any significant impact.
Imagine a world where oil is almost irrelevant or just a small fraction of its present prices. Thatās probably the type that we will have in the next decade or two.
How will we generate revenues to even run our government talks less of saying we will pay substances to a large part of our citizens?
Donāt forget most of our private sector big businesses (banks and co) also are mostly sustained by oil revenues. Telecoms main cash cows are at huge risk of being wiped out by Whatup, Skye, and co. All American business generating revenues from here and not given anything or much in return.
The situation seems dire bro. Sorry to say.
What we need is a total reset of our value system if we stand any chance of overcoming these and coming out as winners in the few decades.
Such a reset will require the collective efforts of government, the entertainment industry (movies, music, television, comedy, and arts), the religious establishments, and the traditional establishments.
Only after such a reset will our āeducationā work for us. Have you made some of our Profs and Ph. Ds lately?
The communist government did some major reset in China to get to where it is today. So did the American public and private establishments.
The thought process always determines the external outcomes. Our thoughts processes at the moment mostly always look for short cuts.
A large population might not really be a bad thing.
The big nations of the world at some point in their existence had a large population to drive the engines of their economic growth and power.
Fix Power ASAP - Powers needs to available and affordable to help power the creativity and engines of various production and manufacturing industries.
Cut down interest rates to single digits - The cost access financing for business should go down drastically.
Fully updated National Identity programme - We need to know ourselves and who we are dealing in every situation. This will help businesses build trust locally and internationally. Facelessness, makes risk taking in business unnecessarily difficult and fatally to the health of a business. A national database that is accessible by all businesses and agencies will make it easier to give credit or solve a crime.
Retool and empower citizens - Preparing will require the govt to purposefully tool and empower citizens to be semi-skilled fro jobs that will help drive industrialisation and private business growth.
Strengthen and radicalize anti-corruption fight - Accountability and justice need to be engrained in to the very fabrics of this country if we are going to survive the coming onslaught of the west. Even though, the fight cannot be won 100%, someone needs to bring it to the point where Nigerians are afraid of getting caught in compromising situations because as it stands, Nigerians are not afraid of anything or anyone. EFCC, ICPC, Judiciary, Police and DSS all need to be purged and retrained for the coming fight.
I stumbled upon this depiction of Nigeriaās population distribution today. Iām not sure what this says about our life expectancy but I sure as hell aināt going to building any more software for people over 40.
Our last census was in 2006. All estimates of our population are just projections from that estimate.
Some guy or gal somewhere took one of such estimates and did some permutation and combination to come up with population distribution above.
And since there is the general narrative that we (an African developing nation) have low life expectancy, it isnāt hard to see how our gal or guy arrived at the above.
Ol boy, who over 40 epp? U no see how our ppl dey throway message ontop Whatsapp, Tinder, and Snapshat as if na drug cause am? Even Bet9ja get him own market.
Na which age set full those apps?
I no fit dey write Daily Devotion app for over 40s when boys dey chop unicorn billions dey clean mouth
