Nigeria, located in the crook of Africa's arm, is incredible! They have a population of around 135 million, and its growing at about 2.38%. By 2025, its projected that Nigeria will be the home of more than 200 million people! Imagine! The Laoshan Velodome, built for the track cycling event in the 2008 Olympics, has seating for 6,000. Nigeria could fill that about 22,500 times over! That's a lot of people! Unfortunately, that also computes to around 238 people per square kilometer, or 384 per square mile.

Say you were a nine year-old girl.
Put yourself in her shoes:

~Out of your class of twenty girls, fourteen of your classmates
live below the poverty line.
~ For every five classes of twenty, about six girls have fathers out
of employment.
~ For the same number of girls, at least two have HIV/AIDS.
~ Out of your fifteen friends, five of them have fathers working in
agricultural jobs.
~ Less than ten girls in your class have use of adequate sanitation
facilities. Your cousin in Hadejia, a more rural part of Nigeria,
told you that in her class of ten girls, only four of her classmates do.
~ Your little brother is four. Even though he really should be
sleeping under a mosquito net, your family couldn't afford one.
Only about six out of every one hundred kids under five can.
~ Two years ago, an estimated 8600 thousand kids under 17 were left
without parents. Of that, 930 thousand were orphaned by AIDS. Your
family just found out that your father has AIDS from his mother.
This has cut at least four years off his life. The average life
expectancy in Nigeria was already grim enough, at 47.

That's Scary.

Your beloved homeland has some major problems. Add to that some major
political unrest, and you've got a massive mess on your hands. Nigeria,
you are told in class, has become too dependent on gas and oil. Your
teacher tells the class that "we are going back to our original source,
agriculture." She explains that your government is trying to offer land
at a more reasonable price. If more farmers have land, more food is
grown. If more food is grown, there is more food to sell. More food to
sell means more money that will be spent in Nigeria's economy. Maria,
your friend, leans over to you and says

"More farm land? That means that Papa can get a job! We can have food
again!"