Nigeria: Halting Global Aging Crisis

By Sonnie Ekwowusi, allafrica.com

August 11, 2009

Nigeria

Like global warming, global aging is now posing a serious problem in the world. You may argue that the aging process is a normal thing. No human being can live forever on earth. Death is inevitable. Only a fool thinks that he/she will live on earth forever. If one doesn't die at young age, one dies some day at old age. But the global aging crisis today results from deliberate policies and programs of many countries controlling their populations.

Consequently demographic researchers across the world are scared stiff. For example, the US Census Bureau (Commissioned by National Institute on Aging (NIA)) has brought out a report which has serious implications for governments in developing counties. The report warns developing countries that they must begin to set policies and programs to cater for their increasingly elderly population.

According to the Bureau, the number of people aged 65 and above is exploding around the world, and the elderly in this bracket will outnumber children under 5 for the first time ever in the next decade. According Richard Suzman, Director NIA: "Aging is affecting every country in every part of the world. While there are important differences between developed and developing countries, global aging is changing the social and economic nature of the planet and presenting difficult challenges".

In it own report, the French Institute for Demographic Studies warns developing countries that they have a short time to set up a workable pension schemes for what it describes as 'population time bomb". Therefore the Institute warns that if developing countries are unable to devise such schemes, a vast number of their elderly will be leaving in poverty in the near future. Further, the report underlines the promotion of birth control methods as a reason for imbalance in population. Analyzing the French Institute's report, the BBC said: "if the French researchers are right, it means the current pension crunch in rich countries may look relatively insignificant compared to what is coming in the future for the rest of the world".

I think that the above reports and warnings should be taken seriously for what we already know of the existing imbalance in the world population. In Europe, it is obvious that the number of old people is increasing without appreciable increase in the number of young people. In his well-researched article, Dr. J. C Willke observes that in the 1930s the Eurocentric peoples of the West comprised 35% of the earth's population.

Today the West comprises about 15% of the earth's population. Going by the current birth rate in Europe, by the year 2025, the 15% will be 9%, and further decrease to 5% by the year 2100. For example, one of the booming businesses in a country like Spain is the walking stick business. Only older women go to churches, a palpable proof that the younger population is fast disappearing. I was struck in London last year seeing a high number of old Londoners lurking around in the London street corners with their hamburgers tightly clutched in their cold hands. Looking at their old faces, one could sense that they needed the care and support of their children in their respective homes.

But since few births are recorded over there, there are very few young people to cater for these oldies at home. The Old People's Homes are made to play the role of normal homes. Old people are dumped in Old People's Home because there are no grand children, great-grand children, distance cousins, siblings of the extended family to cater for them.

In her book: The globalization of the Western cultural revolution, Marguerite A. Peeters writes that the Western feminist and sexual revolution has spurned a new revolution called the global cultural revolution. This revolution is sweeping across many parts of the world today. The revolution permits sexual experimentation of young people, co-habitation outside marriage, divorce, infidelity in marriage, and birth-control through aggressive promotion of contraception and abortion rights. The negative effects of these are palpably felt in the aging crisis rocking the West today. Having done its great destruction in the West, Peeters warns that the new revolution has shifted to developing counties where the religious and cultural values are still very strong and are not yet fully alighted with the ethics of the new revolution.

In Nigeria, under the guise of reducing the increasing maternal mortality some United Nations agencies and non-government organizations (NGOs) are aggressively campaigning against procreation of children in Nigeria. Instead of promoting procreation, these agencies promote population reduction through aggressive promotion of adolescent sexual reproductive rights and women reproductive rights. In fact these agencies promote abortion rights as the number one way of achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) No. 5, which is, reduction of maternal mortality and improving maternal health.
According to these agencies, women should be allowed to exercise their reproductive rights. Abortion is a woman's choice; women are entitled to have access to all safe, effective means of trimming down their family size, including abortion. A woman has a right to make decisions regarding her own body. To deny women access to abortion is a form of gender discrimination. Safe abortions services protect women's right to health. Married women enjoy autonomy to decide whether or not to have children, including the right to decide whether or not to carry or abort a pregnancy which she does not want, with or without the consent of her husband.

Certainly if we allow this Cultural Revolution which is anti-children to flourish, we would be committing a big demographic suicide. Nigeria should avoid the mistake of the West in this matter. We should heed the above warnings of the US Census Bureau and the French Institute for Demographic Studies and avoid getting into the global aging crisis. The right to life is a fundamental human right that cuts across political, cultural and religious barriers. Ditto for procreative rights. We must protect the world's most vulnerable before, during and after birth.

Conversely, the elders need our protection too in Nigeria. In the traditional African society, the elders had their enviable places at home. Old age was something cherished. Old age was synonymous with wisdom. I just came back from travel to see my mother. She is old quite alright, but beneath her old age lies the ever youthfulness and tenderness of a mother. Beneath her falling strength lies so much strength, the strength of wisdom. In the past one year I have been visiting a very sick man in his 80s. Although the man is bedridden, weak and in pains, he is always full of life. He is a very peaceful man, always ready to welcome death whenever it knocks at the door.

But unfortunately we now live in a new world of unbridled individualism and crass materialism where old age is no longer respected. The intrinsic worth of old men and women is now measured by what they have, not what they are. We now despise the elderly. We wish they were dead. We call them grandpa and grandma as if they are useless. Some superstitious human beings even say that their parents are witches. It is strange that many elders have become street beggars in Nigeria. You may ask: where are the children of these elderly beggars? Obviously the African communalism has collapsed. The extended family system is fast disappearing leaving selfishness as a virtue.

Urbanization has compounded the problem. Several people working in big cities hardly find time to visit their parents let alone their village folks. When our old parents are sick in the villages we hardly arrange to give them urgent medical attention. But the moment they die we start organizing parties to mark their departure. So we celebrate the dead more than the living.
To avert the global aging crisis therefore, we need to protect the Nigerian child without shying away from protecting the elderly who ought to have their right places at home at all times.

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