Nigeria’s demographic transition and implications on the attainment of sustainable development goals

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a time-bound global development agenda with 17 goals which targets 169 social, economic, and environmental indicators agreed upon in 2015 by UN member states to be achieved by year 2030. The SDGs includes many targets and references to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, improved health for women and children, enhance universal access to quality education, and gender equality, among others. This study utilised the reports of Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys from 1990 to 2018 and the 2006 national population census results to understand and analyse Nigeria’s demographic trends (age structure, fertility and mortality rates) with the intention to understand how they may affect the country’s efforts towards realising the set targets of the SDGs relating to eradication of poverty and hunger, ensuring health of the people, providing quality education and empowering women and girls. Findings showed that Nigeria’s demographic trends is characterised by slowly declining mortality and fertility rates with high population growth rate, and a dismal performance in the SDGs targets relating to poverty, hunger, health, education and women empowerment. The country will have to slow down its population growth rate and invest heavily in education, healthcare and job creation to be able to achieve the targets of the SDGs by 2030.