VOICE OF COURAGE: Selected speeches of Obafemi Awolowo (Vol 2)

A most courageous articulation of the nationwide feeling of disgust for the Sir Adetokunbo Adetola’s alarming Provisional Census figure of 1973 to which the Supreme Military Council of General Yakubu Gowon gave a loud acceptance and open protective support. It is the filial part of the historic University of Ife Convocation Speech by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, on Saturday, 6th July, 1974.

Continued from last week

THIS brings me to the 1973 census result.

I have examined this result from several standpoints which time does not permit me to elaborate upon here, and as a result, I have been irresistibly impelled to the conclusion that the so-called PROVISIONAL FIGURES are absolutely unreliable and should be totally rejected by the Supreme Military Council.

In the first place, based on UNESCO’s estimate in its Statistical yearbook 1972, at 2.5 per cent growth rate, our estimated population for 1973 should be 59.63 million. The 79.76 million population, which we are now trying to bestow upon ourselves is, therefore, 20.40 million more than the estimate based on the UNESCO projection. By comparison, the U.N. and UNESCO estimates gave us 46.324 million in 1963 as against 55.670 million. In 1963, therefore, we exceeded the UNESCO estimate only by 9.34 million; whereas in 1973 we exceeded the U.N. and UNESCO estimate by 20.40 million.

IT FOLLOWS THAT, IF THE 1963 FIGURES ARE ‘NEAREST THE TRUTH’, THEN THE 1973 FIGURES ARE ‘FURTHEST FROM THE TRUTH’.

In the second place, during the intercensal periods of 1931 to 1953 and 1953 to 1963, the trend in inter-regional population movements showed that the South was gaining steadily at the expense of the North.

In 1931, the population of the North was 58 per cent of the total for the country, in 1953 it was 55 per cent; and in 1963 it was 54 per cent.

I hasten to add that it does not even require arithmetical calculations such as these to demonstrate that the South has, population wise since 1931, been gaining steadily at the expense of the North: the trend is visible for everyone in Nigeria to see.

And having regard to the existing economic and social circumstances of the country, this trend is not only natural and normal, but also necessary and welcome.

• VOICE OF COURAGE Selected speeches of Obafemi Awolowo (Vol 2)

The 1973 PROVISIONAL census figures have, however, shown a complete and sharp reversal of this normal trend. During the intercensal period of 1963 to 1973, the North has moved from 54 per cent of total population to 65 per cent. Unless it can be established that there was gross undercounting of the North in 1963 as compared with the rest of the country, which from all available evidence was certainly not the case, what the 1973 provisional result necessarily implies, therefore, among other things, is that many more Southerners had moved to the North between 1963 and 1973 than the other way round. This is obviously not the case. On the contrary, as we all know, population movement from the North to the South was greater and more massive in the last ten years than ever before.

In the third place, the average population growth rate for Africa as a whole is 2.7 per cent, whilst the growth rates in West African countries range between 1.9 per cent and 3 per cent.

The 1973 provisional census result for Nigeria, however, indicates that the range of growth rates in our 12 States is between – 0.62 per cent in the Western State and 7.04 per cent in the North- Eastern State.

THIS JUST CANNOT BE TRUE. And for anyone seriously to suggest that it can in the face of the visible, tangible relative factors for population growth in the different States in the country, is to deny ordinary commonsense to the Nigerian populace, and to inflict grievous wounds both on our body politic and on the feelings of thinking Nigerian citizens.

In the fourth place, the provisional figures have revived, with greater vividness and starker reality, the erstwhile fear of permanent domination of one group of Nigerians by another.

According to the provisional figures, the population of North-East and Kana States alone is almost equal to that of the South put together. And if the utterly false trends of population growths in the States, indicated by the provisional figures, were contrived and repeated in 1983 – and one cannot now see, if the provisional figures are allowed to stand, why a repeat performance should not occur in 1983; if the same trends were repeated in 1983 by the same contrivances, then 74 per cent of all Nigerians would be living in the North, ten years from now!

To be continued