Population, Ideology and The Environmental Question in Nigeria – A Radical Analysis

Abstract

For the past seven decades, the fear of population explosion has become a scare to many experts, policy makers and the generality of the peoples of the world.  The fear has been anchored on the problem of the earth’s carrying capacity.  Fundamental in the foregoing regard are the seemingly limited resources of the environment to provide for the increasing needs of the ever-rising world population that has hit the seven billion mark sometime in 2010.  The fear, therefore, has arisen from the perceived disequilibria between population and resources which would continue to deepen environmental crises and sustainability.  The increasing inability of the Africans and indeed Nigerians to feed themselves and provide for their basic needs are seen as pointers to pressures of population on the environment.  The incapacity of the environment to sustain the African and the Nigerian people have other more reasonable explanations than just population.  Relegating these factors and holding on to population as the primary causal variable is the ideology in the population and environmental questions which are the focus of our study.  This research has revealed that the pressure of population on the environment is not the key issue.  The issue of environmental crises is a product of global capitalist exploitation being blamed on the poor countries that are just victims of imperialist global environmental degradations visited on these poor countries through the greed of advance capitalist or industrial economies.  The roots of this environmental degradation must be traced to colonial and neo-colonial greed of capital.  It is to rise against this threat that our survival depends nationally and globally.

Keywords: Population, ideology, exploitation, disarticulation, alienation.