NIGERIA’S POPULATION TO GROW BY FOUR MILLION YEARLY – FG

The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma (SAN), has said Nigeria’s population will rise by four million every year. He, therefore, stated that there was an urgent need to curb the growth rate and ultimately reduce poverty.

Udoma said this while delivering his speech at the 58th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association in Abuja on Tuesday. Speaking at the event with the theme, ‘Transition, Transformation and Sustainable Institutions’, the minister said China was able to reduce poverty and boost its economy by checking its population.

He said while he would not recommend the Chinese approach of one-child policy, there was a need for Nigeria to adopt an approach that would suit its own reality.

Udoma said, “We need national support for measures that can help to moderate rather rapid rates of population growth. Current estimates suggest that we may be adding over four million people to our population every year.

This is the size of many large cities. Indeed, it is the size of some smaller African countries.

As the Chinese have shown, managing population growth is an important part of any strategy to achieve sustainable economic development. In this strategy, 46 points of the Economic and Recovery Growth Plan gives responsibility to my ministry together with the Ministry of Health to develop policies to help manage our rate of population growth.”

(Punch)