What will happen to the Yoruba in 2050?

By Bamidele Ademola-Olateju

Nigeria's population growth rate is 2.61%. One child is born every 4 seconds, one person is dead every 14 seconds, net addition of one person happens every 6 seconds.

Going by this rate, our population will be 206 million in 2020. Using the rule of 70 (the number of years it takes a variable to double), it will take between 27-30 years for Nigeria's population to double.

Pa Jimi Solake telling African stories to children 

 This is based on the assumption that our growth rate will peak at 2.62% in 2020 and decline to 2.04% in 2050. By 2050, Nigeria will be the third most populous country in the world. Here are the fallouts;

1. If the Yoruba are 40million, that means we have 1/5 of the population.

2. Lagos state is home to about 20 million people. That is 1/10 of Nigeria's population and the population of some countries. As disturbance and poverty hits the hinterland, the population of Lagos will grow at almost the rate as national population figures due to internal migration. Never in recorded history has a city coped with such population.

3. Nigeria might be growing in terms of the Gross Domestic Product but that is deceptive. The real measure is in income per capita. It has been going down since the sixties.

4. The median age is about 18 years which means the country is very young. If in doubt check the bus stops.

5. Nigeria is actually a small country in terms of size when compared with its population growth. The landmass for the Yoruba is even smaller, what to do?

Where will salvation come from, with inept leadership and dwindling national income? There are questions that gives me headache:

1. There is no investment in infrastructure to support the Yoruba of the future.

2. We are not giving our children competitive education.

3. We are desecration the environment with bad land use practices that are not sustainable.

4. We are plunging our aquifers with indiscriminate boreholes. We will run out of water.

6. Where so much mindless plundering of the treasury and the earth is happening, the potential for war or pestilence increases.

7. Arable land is on the path of head on collision with population growth.

8. The professional layer of doctors, lawyers and engineers are migrating abroad, the business layer is undergoing systematic decimation because there is no Yoruba Capital. The trade layer is lost to drugs and gambling. The average age of mechanics is 55. The young are not interested in vocations.

9. Where will be the fate of your children who are 20-25 years old now who will be 52-57years old then?

10. If you think 32 years is too far into the future, Buhari was military president 35 years ago.

We are on the road to perdition unless we see the looming disaster. The good news for me is, if I am around then, I would have obtained my boarding pass to get out of this world.

 Please do the same extrapolation for your region. Do not ask me why I focused on the Yoruba. I chose what I know.