Nigerian Population Growth

Nigeria became an independent nation in 1960, with rough population estimates of 45 million people. For our purposes, we accept the fact that Nigeria, at that time, was the most populated nation in Sub-Saharan Africa! It grew to 55.6 million by 1965. Estimations for the size of the Igbo population vary between 15 and 17% of all Nigerians.

Where are we today? As of 2024, we generally accept that China is the largest nation population-wise, with about 1,460,000,000 people. However, with a history of overcounting and the negative impact of the One Child Policy, there is a strong likelihood that a demographic collapse is going on there and that the big number is overestimated. Officials are commonly placing India as the largest today, now at 1.4 billion people. The USA is third at 337 million, Indonesia is fourth at 282 million, and Pakistan is fifth at 252 million.

Would you believe that Nigeria is now sixth with 237 million people? Did you know that the population size was the same as that of the United States in 1985?

Brazil is seventh at 220 million, Bangladesh eighth at 169 million, and Russia ninth at 141 million. Nigeria is much bigger than Russia! Continuing, Mexico is tenth at 131 million, Ethiopia eleventh at 126 million, and Japan twelfth at 124 million. No. 13 is the Philippines at 117 million, and Egypt 14th at 112 million.

Where are the European nations? Germany is No. 19 with 83 million; the United Kingdom is No. 21 with 68 million; France is No. 23 with 65 million; and Italy is No. 25 with 60 million.

Put another way, Nigeria is 2.86 larger than Germany, 3.5 times bigger than the UK, 3.65 times larger than France, and 4 times larger than Italy. I don't think very many people realize that which is why I decided to present it here.

Continuing a bit with this, there are 31 million Igbo speakers. That is larger than the total population of Nepal, Madagascar, Australia, Taiwan, Syria, Romania, and Chile, among many others.