Talking before thinking

One thing I say a lot is that Nigerian government officials have a sad tendency to pull statistics our of their arses. I just read a story on NEXT about Nigerian soldiers fathering a large number of children in Liberia, and this again to my mind reinforces that view. Sule Bassi, a Nigerian foreign official claims that Nigerian soldiers fathered 250 000 children in Liberia.

Two hundred and fifty thousand!

Now, I will not for one second deny the fact that Nigerians are a promiscuous lot, so it is only natural that our representatives, soldiers, footballers, students, Olympians and of course government officials, go about plunging into the females in whatever host communities/countries that they find themselves in.

However, let us ask certain questions about Mr. Bassi's claim...

The Liberian Civil War began in 1989 when the country's population was just under a million. A year later, the West African regional body, ECOWAS formed the military unit ECOMOG to bring an end to the war. Initially, there was equitable deployment of West African troops, but eventually Nigeria bore the bulk of ECOMOG's man-power and finances. It must be noted though, that ECOMOG peaked at 12 000 troops in 1995.

Liberia as a country currently has a population of just under 4 millions,with a growth rate of 3.66% and a male-female ratio of 0.98 men per woman, almost 1 to 1. If we project backwards, using these statistics, we would find that Liberia's population in 1997 when ECOMOG pulled out was just over a million.

As is the case with most developing countries, almost 50% of Liberia's population is children under 18. Now if in 1997, Liberia had a million people, it is safe to assume that at the worst 40% or 400 000 were children under 18 (current ratio for children under 14 is 43%). Nigerian involvement in Liberia began seven years earlier, which knocks off all of the children between the ages 7 and 18. Just looking at it logically, it would mean that there is no way that children ages 0 - 7 would be as many as 100 000. Yet Mr. Sule Bassi would have us believe that Nigerian soldiers fathered 250 000 children with women in Liberia?

Simple and short, there were not even enough women to go round to fit such numbers. Mr. Bassi should get off his arse and make himself useful. If he can't do that he should kindly shut the hell up.

Rant over. You can get back to work...