Population Policy In Nigeria

Analysis of population issues and policies in Nigeria, Africa.

Introduction.

One of the current issues of today is the debate about population. This is the case in most of the developing countries of the world, particularly Africa. The continent of Africa accounts for about one quarter of the world’s land surface but in 1973, there lived less than 10 per cent of the total population. The various regions of Africa such as North, West, East and central are characterized by variations in the economic, social and cultural patterns and demographic experiences. However, the sub-regions are similar in some respects, especially in regard to their colonial experience, the relative under-development of their economies and the recency of their emergence

Nigeria did not recognise the population growth as a problem before 1980s, because the nation’s petroleum revenue generated from the crude oil market was still in the booming process. Nigeria began to see the increasing population as a problem only when oil price suddenly fell to US$11 per barrel in the 1980s (Mba, 2002). The fall in oil price acted as an eye opener to the government of Nigeria to the reality of population components and the need for a population policy. Before fall in oil price, there have been some global programmes that aimed at controlling births in the developing countries. Some of these programmes were the World Population Plan of Action (WPPA) of 1974, the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) of April 1980, the Monrovian strategy, and the Kilimanjaro Programme of Action adopted by the African council of ministers in 1984. These programmes suggested that countries should embrace a population policy that will reduce birth rate and increase its development (Obono, 2003). However, the programmes associated development with control fertility got attention only when the oil prices decreased which lead to a fall in the nation’s

It centres on the areas of maximising profit and minimising cost. The major argument of the theory is that, social policy formulators are rational beings who formulate policy by maximising profit and minimising cost. Thus, Nigerian men and women who are the main aspects in determining the population play this role by their rational actions. The rational action theory is based on certain assumptions according to the Ibadan Journal of the Social Sciences, 2017, such as;

The decision makers are generally men of wisdom, experience and rationality who as a result of their competence and position are designated to make policies on behalf of the masses.

The decision makers are assumed to be dispassionate, informed and, therefore posses the ability to choose specified objectives from the wide range of choices and options before