Annual report on the social and economic progress of the people of Nigeria.

Date:
[1936]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on the social and economic progress of the people of Nigeria. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/110 (page 10)
    language which, like Swahili in East Africa, but to a much more limited extent, is tending to become the lingua franca of the Northern Provinces. General. 31. The population of Nigeria, including Mandated Territory, as found from the Census of April, 1931, was 19,928,171 persons, inclusive of Natives of Nigeria, Native Foreigners and Non- Natives. The estimated total population of Nigeria, on the 31st December, 1936, was 20,190,771. 32. The total area of Nigeria, including Mandated Territory, is 372,674 square miles, giving an average density of population of 54.2 persons per square mile. The density for Nigeria, excluding Mandated Territory, is 56.5, while for Mandated Territory only it falls to 16.4 persons per square mile. Particulars of the population and density for each province as at the. date of the 1931 Census are given in Table I at the end of this chapter. 33. Table II gives the percentage composition of the whole population by sex and adolescence for each province. For the whole of Nigeria there are, according to the Census figures, 1,115 adult females and 1,291 children per 1,000 adult males. 34. The excess of adult females over adult males is almost identical in the Northern and Southern Provinces in spite of the marked difference in their climatic and economic conditions.(1) The number of children under 15 per 1,000 adult males is 1,154 in the Northern Provinces, while the reported figures for the Southern Provinces give 1,496 children to 1,000 adult males. The latter figure may be an excessive estimate, as a few counts in limited areas of the Southern Provinces showT only 1,232 children per 1,000 adult males, and the most reasonable estimate for the Southern Provinces (vide Volume I, page 21 of the Census of Nigeria, 1931) would appear to be 1,300 children per 1,000 adult males. The difference in the proportion of children in the Northern and Southern Provinces, if these figures are correct, suggests that there is either a greater adult mortality in the South, or that the birth-rate in the South is tending to rise. The latter contingency is unlikely in view of the general fall of the birth-rate all over the world and in the only parts of Nigeria for which adequate vital registration exists. (!) In India, for example, there is a marked excess of males in the dry and sub-humid areas of the North, replaced by something approaching equality in the humid parts of Southern India.