So Osemhen of www.eurekanaija.com took the time to write a long-winded response to Temitayo Olofinlua's 'Pull a Seat; Let's Talk About Sex' post...
"The initial premise of this article is that human reproduction is a commodity which must be regulated. I think this is flawed because it reduces the dignity of the poor. You saying in essence, "You're poor. You don't deserve to have children."
"It means more people at the bus-stop jostling for the few buses. It means more students writing JAMB to get into the few universities. ..."
This is rather pessimistic. Do you honestly think that the problems we have with the bus-system boil down to the number of commuters at the bus-stop? Or the problem of education lies with the fact that too many people are writing JAMB? In engineering, there's a tool called Root Cause Analysis. It helps to solve problems from their root causes rather than attacking the symptoms. A symptom: People fighting at bus stop. The cause: Not enough buses coming at regular intervals. The solution: Put more buses on the road.
But what you're saying with this article is that we should reduce the people at the bus-stop, that there is NO way the buses will ever increase in number or frequency. O ye of little faith :)
The Scandinavian countries have been here before. Population control led to lower populations and relative increases in quality of life. Know what they lost? Happiness. Their kids, the wonderful kids whose existence they sought to sugar coat, have the highest rates of abortions, substance abuse and suicide. Know what else they lost? Their workforce. Less kids then equals less adults now to work. Less adults to work equals higher employment rates, yes but also more taxes on the employee (Government must chop). These taxes are the funding used for medicare for the old/sick amongst other things. So you know what else has happened? Euthanasia is being legalized. The old people, the parents who made the initial choice, are given the option of dying quickly to save costs. Ironic isn't it? They wouldn't have children to "save costs" and now the whole idea of "saving costs" is coming back to kill them, literally.
You've clearly highlighted the problems we might face in the future but I ask that you take a longer viewpoint, and fight the temptation to advocate a quick-fix with adverse repercussions. We need more schools, not less students. We need more jobs, not less graduates. We need more houses, we need more hospitals. We need more."
Thank you, Osemhen.
What do you think?
Read the original articles here (part one) and here (part two).
Osemhen, while I understand your perspective - and largely agree; I think the right approach would be to strike a balance.
ReplyDeleteYes, we need more buses, universities, better governance etc... but we also need to have less pressure on these amenities.
In my opinion, Tayo is not saying "you are poor, don't have children". She is saying: "you are poor, don't have TOO MANY children".
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a low-income family having 3 or 4 children - in my opinion. But when they have 7, or 11 (largest number I have discovered in the past three weeks) - then there IS a problem.
Taking a look at the present situation of things in Nigeria, I believe that population control would help the nation a great deal (on the long run) However considering the present I believe that the provision of more social amenities, increase and alternative routes of transportation as oppose to just road transport would help. Also, in the area of education, improved funding for the present educational institution and informal education should as well be encouraged.
ReplyDeleteIn conclusion, I do agree with the fact that Nigeria needs to deal with thee problem of population control especially with respect to the nearest future and also solve the challenges that we are currently experiencing based on large population.
hmm.. population control, the West's biggest project in Africa or Sub-Saharan Africa -that geographical term used to indicate the most impoverished countries of Africa. Go to about any government hospital or family planning clinic, condom is made available pro-bono, while drugs to combat malaria, (a disease that kills one child every minute) are still sold at market prices. It makes one wonder whether the numerous 'NGOs' funded by Gates and his ilk as well as western governments are much more interested in controlling population growth than preserving the living.
ReplyDeleteNow, come to think of it, there are advantages to having a large population. Economies in swift ascendancy, majorly China and India (these two readily come to mind) have a combined population of nearly 2.5 billion which is fueling their rapid economic advancement. China, for instance, has become the beautiful bride of Western businesses with more companies seeking to enter the market. Facebook, which is currently unavailable to the Chinese, is set to almost double its number of users if its negotiations with Chinese authorities sail through. While the purchasing power of the average Chinese is still less than her Western counterpart, the sheer number of the Chinese makes the country a destination market for any enterprise with global intention.
Coming back home, Nigeria’s burgeoning population has made economic growth inevitable for us despite having a most unfavourable climate for business operations. Our population has seen us rise to become Africa’s largest market for most goods and services. Countless experts, including this have forecasted that our economy will overhaul South Africa’s before the end of the decade to become Africa’s largest due to “…declining dependency ratio which is coming from the share of working age population will help to drive economic growth.”-economic jargon for the statement-‘ high number of workers will lead to industrial growth’. So, it comes to be that Nigeria with all the bombings, epileptic power supply, grossly inadequate infrastructure, poor economic policy formulation and implementation gets to zoom past S/A.
Fantatstic job, koye but our expanding population is doing us some good.
Hmmm... Well said.
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