Popcorn: Nigerian Alarmist Figures Refuted

Demographic experts and international population control groups have been speculating for quite some time about just how many people live in Nigeria.

According to the Population Reference Bureau, Nigeria’s 1991 mid-year population was 122.5 million.1 The December 1990 edition of Populi reported that Nigeria’s 1990 population was 117 million, and warned that the country’s population would reach “622 million” in the year 2040.2

Similarly, the June 1989 issue of Planfed News claimed that the 1989 population was “about 112 million…[and] could reach 165 million by the year 2000 and…280 million by 2015.…”3 Planfed said “Nigeria’s sky-rocketing population [would] hit about 500 million by 2030 if appreciable reduction in fertility rate is not accomplished.”4

Population alarmists Paul and Anne Ehrlich reported that “Nigeria’s population, 115 million in 1989, is projected to reach 160 million in 2000…and over 530 million in 2050.”5 Jodi Jacobson of the Worldwatch Institute put Nigeria’s 1989 population at “110 million people…[which] will jump to 564 million by 2050 at current rates of growth…”6

According to Werner Fornos, president of the Population Institute, “At its present growth rate, Nigeria’s now [1987] 108 million population would grow to…one billion in 75 years!”7

Caught up in the fervor over guessing Nigeria’s population were The New Encyclopedia Britannica’s 1990 Micropaedia and the 1991 World Almanac and Book of Facts. According to The Britannica, Nigeria’s “population in 1990 was estimated to be 119,812,000 .…” while The Almanac put the 1990 figure at “118.865,000.”8

But a report on 20 March 1992 indicates that everyone’s favorite population guessing game has come to an end. From Lagos, Nigeria, the November 1991 census totals were released: 88.5 million!9

Whom to believe?

The 1991 Nigerian census was the most thorough and accurate count in the nation’s history. More than 800,000 census enumerators fanned out across Nigeria to take the count, and the country’s borders were closed for three days while the tally was taken. The populace was ordered to remain at home to await the census takers, and shops and factories throughout Nigeria were shut down. The Nigerian government predicted that “further results would not alter the present figure.”

Three times in the past 30 years — in 1962, 1963 and 1973 — Nigeria attempted to take a national census and each time the results were said to be fraudulent. Christians and animists vied with Muslims, neither faction willing to accept a count which placed it in a minority status or shortchanged its political representation. Regional population totals were inflated by Nigeria’s 21 states, now 30, to ensure their “proper share” of government revenues. The 1962 census was canceled after various regional governments found it unacceptable, and the 1973 census was nullified when the results in many areas were so bizarre as to be deemed fictitious. The “official” 1963 census was accepted through political compromise. The Nigerian government now admits that the 1963 census figures were arrived at by “negotiation rather than enumeration.”

Despite these shortcomings in Nigeria’s 1963 population figures, the numbers were readily utilized by the international population control movement. Assigning various population growth rates — ranging from 2.5% to 4% per year — to the 1963 numbers, the populationists produced their guesstimates.

Armed with this statistical “proof” of Nigeria’s impending population disaster, USAID and the World Bank harangued Nigeria to implement massive population control programs. Planned Parenthood and others pressed for the legalization of abortion. Beset by these “experts,” in 1988 the Nigerian government issued a formal “National Policy on Population,” setting goals for reductions in the nation’s birth rate.10

As for the would-be population controllers, Nigeria’s census has now exposed their cherished population figures as more fiction than science, a handy propaganda tool to implement their agenda. And what about world population figures, estimated at 5.4 billion and growing by some 90 million each year — numbers produced by the very same crowd that gave out the now discredited Nigerian numbers?

Embarrassed demographers at the U.S. Census Bureau agreed that all such figures would have to be “carefully reevaluated” and perhaps “adjusted.” “It’s back to the drawing boards,” said one Census Bureau spokesman. “After all, when there’s a discrepancy of such magnitude in the numbers of one of the world’s most heavily populated countries, it’s bound to affect world totals.”

Pick a number, anyone?