By 2050 Nigeria will be the world’s third most populous nation and our current landmass of 923,769 km2 will be inadequate to sustain a projected population of 400m so Tinubu must act now

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Dr Martin Luther King always spoke about "The fierce urgency of now" pointing out that gradualism was the killer of goals and dreams. I hope that President Bola Tinubu shares his view that: “We cannot afford the tranquilising drug of gradualism.”

[2] It is projected that by 2050, Nigeria will have a population of 400m, making her the third most populous nation in the world after India and China

[3] We naively believe that the rest of the world has the capacity to supply 400m people with enough automobiles, telephone handsets, laptop computers, defence equipment, pharmaceuticals, luxury goods, aircraft, trains, etc. Well, we are in for a big surprise as no nation is going to establish a dedicated Nigerian manufacturing zone

[4] What made the US civil rights movement and the fight against apartheid successful was their emphasis on the here and now. Nothing was postponed until a future date and nobody spoke about “waiting to see how things pan out first.” No one certainly prayed to God to intervene with biblical miracles as we currently do in Nigeria

[5] Nigeria urgently needs to open amalgamation negotiations with Benin Republic, Cameroon and Niger Republic. If we do not, we will collapse under the weight of our limited landmass come 2050

[6] It is unfortunate that the masses of the world’s largest black nation, Nigeria have not got the message that they need more land to expand her economy. Nigeria is classed a Mint economy along with Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey but alas, look at the gulf in the size of our productivity and GDP. Mexico ($1.15trn), Indonesia ($1.01trn), Turkey ($851bn) and Nigeria ($375bn)

[7] I can dig up similar figures for kilometres of tarred road, number of hospital beds, megawatts of electricity generated, percentage of the populace with access to pipe-borne water, etc. We are falling behind our contemporaries and the longer this goes on, the wider that gulf will get

[8] India has a landmass of 3.28 km², while China has one of 9.59m km². No matter how you cut it, Nigeria will need at least 2m square kilometres by 2050, so a merger with our neighbours is a must

[9] With about 80% of Niger Republic being in the Sahara Desert, we desperately need that real estate. Just imagine the size of the solar farm we could build. It would power the entire Africa

[10] Frederick Lugard once described us as follows: “He suffers little from the apprehension for the future or grief for the past. He lacks the power of organisation and is conspicuously deficient in the management and control alike of men or business.” If we fail to address this landmass issue, we will have proven him right!