TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
Former Nigerian President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has expressed concern over Africa’s growing population, saying that failure to manage the population boom effectively would keep encumbering progress in the continent.
Obasanjo, the Chairman of Africa Progress Group (APG) made this known on Tuesday at the Public Presentation of the 2020 maiden edition of the APG annual report on “Making Africa’s Population An Asset”.
While giving tips on how the continent’s population explosion burden could be turned into asset, the former President warned African governments against ignoring the overwhelming evidence that the failure of leadership to apply a set of hard choices on population management was preventing Africa from progressing.
He stressed that if well managed, Africa’s huge population would yield huge dividends for national and regional development adding that African governments and other stakeholders should prioritise education, health, food security, housing, energy, transportation and employment in achieving APG’s aim of introducing the “Population As Asset Responsiveness Index (PARI).”
According to Obasanjo, “Over the last several years, as I travelled through cities and rural communities in Africa, my heart sinks with the sea of heads that fleet across my eyes in parks, marketplaces and under bridges. Even today as I flew over some settlements from Minna to Lagos and traversed the road from Ikeja to Victoria Island, the sheer number of persons literally oozing out from nowhere kept my mind numb and exasperated. By the year, the situation has been worsening and has filled me with a sense of foreboding.
“Three clusters of questions pop up in my mind any time the scary thoughts of the ever-increasing population kept me awake at night. The first cluster is: how are we going to feed this exploding population? Only a few days ago, the alarm was raised about imminent food crisis in Nigeria. Similar alarm bells have been ringing with increasing stridency all over Africa. How are we going to house them; educate them, provide them with health security and other variants of human security?
“The second cluster of questions is: how do we keep this keg of gunpowder of the large army of unemployed youth from exploding? How do we keep them from enlisting in violent extremists’ groups and in gangs of kidnappers? The third cluster of questions is: how can Africa attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Agenda 2063 in a turbulent sea of exploding, not-well-managed populations?
“While these clusters of questions are frightening, they would appear to have an elegantly simple solution- political will and action to make population an asset. This is the master key of a sort! I am sure you noticed that this “key” has two elements- the will and the action. It is not enough to shroud political will in mere political rhetoric and sloganeering but translating such will into concrete, measurable actions with visible impact on the ground. This is why, in this report, APG, being a group with a burning desire for Africa’s progress has established a unique measure of progress of African countries on the concrete and measurable actions on responsiveness to their growing populations.”
On how African government could turn the over-population burden to asset, the APG chairman said, “In the report, we have provided over 150 strategic options for African countries in all sectors in managing their populations ranging from providing quality education for all, through investment in food and nutrition security, health security, environmental security, sustainable housing for all, to entrepreneurship and employment security.”
