…Then, why have a baby?

He just wouldn’t stop talking! He commented on virtually everything- a ditch on the road, thick dark fumes from dying engines…. He just kept on. I had targeted the first cab so I could do some brooding in the 45 minutes to about an hour it would take to get me to my destination but it became crystal as the car barreled up the express way that ultimately, I would have to kiss that dream goodbye and I did.

In my frustration, I began to wish that I possessed the same powers as Hera, wife of great Greek god, Zeus. Hera had used her powers to cast a spell on Echo, the loquacious mountain nymph who was having an affair with Zeus but would often engage Hera in long-winded conversations, giving Zeus enough time to evade her whenever Hera invaded Mount Kithairon in search of Zeus.

When Hera realised this plot, she cursed her, reducing her speaking capacity to one that could only repeat the last words another person just said.

In my silent outrage, I could have cast the same spell on the middle aged man if I was a Greek goddess au contraire, I could only sit quietly and with a grimace on my face!

Ironically, I didn’t wear that grimace for too long because a little while after fuming, his words subtly began to  arouse my curiosity and a treacherous smile started to play across my lips. I did everything mortally possible to extirpate it but the wild beast was not to be tamed. Instead, it broke into an ebullient laugh, leading the cheer for the middle aged man’s fan club. He smiled in acknowledgment, geared up to fire on while I waited for his next words with fervid curiosity but his phone rang and it was his grown up son…

Man: “Hope you are doing great? I am on my way home, we will finalise the issue when I get there. How is the young lady?”

Son: “She is doing alright but she is nervous, she fears you may not like her enough as a daughter-in-law.”

Man: “That depends on whom and what she is but make sure you don’t get her pregnant. Times have changed. She must be bringing something to the table—a career or a skill. If you marry a liability, you are doomed to a miserable life time of poverty, you will have babies you can’t feed”

Some mental lightening struck in my head and the nerves in my brain picked up a higher voltage as he spoke the words “babies you can’t feed” but as the lightening subsided, an epiphany widened before my eyes like ripples over a stream.

When we consider the problems of Nigeria, when we chew on the carcinogenic bane of our motherland, words like lawlessness, unemployment, epileptic power supply, terrorism, crime, environmental degradation, decaying economy and the most ubiquitous of them all, corruption easily sweeps into our mind. As a matter of fact, in Nigeria today, corruption is considered the greatest enemy of the state and must be annihilated at any cost. Since PMB took over the reins of this nation, all his administration has done is witch-hunting. Like King Uther of Merlin’s Camelot, who swore not to allow any form of sorcery in the city, PMB and his crew declared a clampdown on corruption from day one but has this turned our national fortune around?

The question that has condemned my grey matter to a fierce state of entropy is this: Is corruption really Nigeria’s greatest problem? I employ us to consider this with grave insight. Is corruption really the substratum and the vertex of our national woes? I thought the same till the scales fell off my eyes, thus, I beg to posit the contrary.

In 1960, Nigeria had a population of 45, 211, 614. Those who lived in the periods after independence indeed ate the good of the land. They tell juicy tales about those that displayed inexplicable brilliance being given opportunities to study at the best universities abroad on government scholarships. Those who went to federal universities being treated like kings. Between 1972 and 1985, a naira was equivalent to a dollar and graduates were sent employment letters in their homes. That was our country.

Today, with an estimated population of over 183,000,000, growing at about 2.8 per cent per annum, Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country with a prediction of her population running into over 300 million by 2050. Countrymen that is precisely three decades and five years from now. We seem not to understand the enormity of the consequences that is already, as a matter of fact, trailing our sprawling population. All we chant is change and what do we point our tainted fingers at?-Corruption. Perhaps, if we try to examine this conundrum with our mind’s eye, we may begin to peel off the wool covering our physical eyes layers by layers like the onion sheds its skins.

Our biggest problem in Nigeria is not corruption. Yes, it is one of our numerous problems but it is not the root of our multifarious problems. Nigeria’s undoing is its unchecked population growth stemming from indiscriminate procreation. Why do we keep having babies we cannot feed? Based on UNICEF statistics, in developing countries, Nigeria inclusive, the cost of raising a child from birth to age 17 is estimated at US$16,200 (N4,212,000) yet a man who works a menial job in Nigeria has a dozen children or even more.

How would we not have an increased rate of crime with unfed babies? They would in time learn to fend for themselves somehow, won’t they? How can terrorism be curbed when millions of children are not cared for and have no roof over their heads? Environmental degradation is inevitable in a society where population size far outgrows our rapidly depleting natural resources; unemployment will definitely be on the rise when over 1,000 people have to compete for one spot. Money laundering, stealing from public coffers will not cease as long as people act individually, damning the best collective interests out of avarice and a desire to feed too many and more unborn babies.

In 1983, the late king of pop, Michael Jackson, released the single “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin”. Three decades later, his lyrics poignantly address our national problem: “If you can’t feed your baby, then don’t have a baby, you will be always trying, to stop that child from crying – hustling, stealing, lying…”