What would Nigeria be like in another 50 years and perhaps 100 years from now? How should policy makers, analysts and citizens imagine the future of Nigeria?
By Napoleon Esemudje
Some inauspicious six months before the outbreak of World War 1 in July 1914, an equally monumental undertaking was afoot in one of the British controlled territories of West Africa.
Sir Frederick Dealtry Lugard, the 56-year-old, swashbuckling brigadier general and colonial administrator, finally received approval from the Colonial Office in Whitehall, London to effect his long conceived proposal for the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria.
Sir Lugard subsequently justified his most singular accomplishment, insisting in his book The Dual Mandate, that amalgamation, contentious as it was even then, was an economic imperative for the colonial administration.
It was he noted, “designed to involve as little dislocation of existing conditions as possible, while providing for the introduction later of such further changes as were either foreseen, but not immediately necessary, or might be suggested by future experience. They would then be rather in the nature of natural evolution than of reversal.”
Many may yet debate the motives and merits of amalgamation, but Sir Lugard’s thoughts about future changes in the country being brought about by the “nature of natural evolution than reversal” have mostly held true.
Even then, the fledging country of some 17 million people of disparate ethnicities and faiths in 1914 must have evolved beyond the imaginations of its architects.
For the birth of Nigeria, one of Africa’s most remarkable geo-political engineering feats has delivered 108 years later, warts and all, Africa’s most populous country, the seventh most populous country in the world, and the country with the largest economy in Africa.
These are developments that beg the question of Nigeria’s future. What would Nigeria be like in another 50 years and perhaps 100 years from now? How should policy makers, analysts and citizens imagine the future of Nigeria?
Can We Predict Nigeria’s Future?
Perhaps we can and we should. We have the benefit of Nigeria’s modern history and a vested interest to envision its future. Questions about Nigeria’s future are important not least because the answers will manifest in the lifetime of millions of Nigerians and their progenies.
But as the old saying written on those vintage mammy wagons remind us, ‘Nobody Knows Tomorrow’ and no one can claim to know with absolute certainty, the specifics of the future. What is also true is that we can make logical inferences about the future based on current data and past trends within reasonable measures. Because what happens in the future lives of men, women and their unborn generations is determined, often, by their present day actions and circumstances.
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Today after all is but yesterday and the future is tomorrow. Still, predicting the future requires a measure of circumspection and prudence. While the data used in this article are current or extrapolated from recent data (from the Nigeria Population Commission, United Nations, World Bank, Worldometer, World Population Prospects and Macrotrends except where otherwise stated), it is expected that the data would change over time and perhaps the most worrisome data may be positively moderated or at worse, not deteriorate further.
The Coming Population Explosion
Nigeria’s population is a measure for which trend data is readily available. In 1914, colonial office papers placed Nigeria’s population at an estimated 16.8 million with an average density of 18 people per square kilometer. Remember this density value (based on land area of 910,770 square kilometer not on total surface area) because it is indicative of the pressure on available land area and the competition for related land resources.
Almost 50 years later at independence in 1960, the country’s population had increased to 45.14 million with a population density of 50 people per square kilometer. Today, 62 years later, the population has increased to an estimated 218 million. It is projected that by 2050, Nigeria’s population would have increased to an estimated 390 million.
By 2100, roughly 78 years from now, Nigeria’s population is projected to be over 728 million with a population density of 799 people per square kilometer. At this time, Nigeria would become the 3rd most populous country in the world, just behind China and India but with less than 10% and 30% of their respective landmass.
Some studies suggest Nigeria’s population in 2100 would be at 791 million overtaking China to become the 2nd most populated country in the world. Either way, Nigeria would consequently have a much higher population density than China (146 people per square kilometer) and India (412 per square kilometer).
Arguably, significantly large populations, where well harnessed and sustainable, offers a country some benefits including that of a large productive workforce and market. But given its present realities and trajectory, such population projections are worrisome for Nigeria.
If today, with an average population density of 240 people per square kilometer, Nigerians are forcefully (and often violently) contesting land ownership, from farmlands to dwellings, the ramifications when the population density jumps to 428 people per square kilometer in 2050 and to 799 people per square kilometer in 2100 would be severe.
To guard against the likely upheavals that would follow such pressure on land resources, and to ensure national food security, a more systemic, mechanized, and sustainable framework for agricultural productivity would have to be put in place beyond today’s largely subsistence level farming and extensive food importation.
But it is in the urban centres, all across the country, that the struggle for and cost of land resources will be most alarming. Today, roughly 52% of Nigerians (111 million people) live in urban areas. This is a massive jump from just 15% (6.9 million people in 1960) and less than 5% at amalgamation.
It is projected that by 2050, 67% of Nigerians (261 million) people will be urban dwellers. And in the unlikely scenario that the proportion stays unchanged at 67%, almost 500 million people will be living in Nigeria’s cities by 2100. They will become the inhabitants of a new and formidable type of megalopolis.
