Nigeria needs planned population to reduce crime – Security Expert

July 16, 2018

By Ijendu Iheaka

Mr Osondu Mbonu, an Aba-based Security Consultant has called on the federal government to make conscious efforts to plan Nigeria’s population in order to reduce crime and criminality.

Mbonu who made the call in Aba on Monday during an interview with our reporter stressed that unplanned population raises crime rates.

He said that planning a population has many benefits which include fair sharing of resources, proper planning for citizens, job creation and empowerment and expansion of a nation’s economic base.

He said if Nigeria must check crime and criminality, it must plan its population in order to get the best from the huge population it has been endowed with.

“Planning a nation’s population enables the government to know areas prone to crime, to know the level of manpower needed in terms of law enforcement and security, where to post them and in what number.

“It also enables government to know when persons have come into a country’s borders or left their borders.

“Nigeria is said to be having the problem of herdsmen invasion from other countries partly because its population is not planned.

“So its porous borders makes its easy for people to infiltrate the country because no attention is given to the number of people at a given location at a time”, he said.

He said that population planning would benefit Nigeria because it would enable the nation to know the residents, their ages, qualifications, capacities, cultures, religions and how and in what area they could be gainfully engaged.

Mbonu noted that planning the population would help shore up the economy through gainful engagement of its labour force and to fight poverty through equitable allocate resources to the people.

He said that a government hoping to plan its population for optimal utilization and productivity must be willing to obey its laws and give to its citizens their constitutional rights for it to be rewarding.