The year is off to a bang with new citizens being born on New Year Day.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has estimated that 20,210 babies would be born in Nigeria on New Year day 2018.
According to UNICEF, this number of babies born in Nigeria represents the third largest population of newborns in world on January 1, 2018. India and China occupied the first and second positions with 69,070 and 44,760 newborns respectively.
However, a total of 21,493 birth of newborns were recorded by Country Meters on the first day of 2018. This figure is a 1283 difference from the estimates of UNICEF.
Other countries with high number of birth include: Pakistan, 14,910; Indonesia, 13,370; United States, 11,280; Democratic Republic of Congo, 9,400; Ethiopia, 9,020; and Bangladesh, 8,370. However, Seychelles had the lowest number of birth with just only 4 estimated births.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines had 5 births, Saint Lucia - 6, Tonga - 7 and 9 births for Kiribati.
There has always been issues around the reliability and validity of such figures by international organisations due to poor recording system in Nigeria and other developing countries. The UNICEF estimated that 20,210 babies were born on January 1, 2018 while the number of childbirths on Country Meters show a higher figure.
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Low life expectancy is a major concern for these new births
Although there is a high number of babies born on New Year Day, the life expectancy is below the average life expectancy at birth of the global population which is about 71 years according to Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations.
Nigeria’s average life expectancy for the babies born on New Year Day has been put at 2072 which means most of the babies born have an average life expectancy of just 54 years.
While many babies would survive, some would not make it past their first day like in 2016 where around 2,600 children died every day worldwide within their first 24 hours every day of the year, according to UNICEF.
Also, for almost two million newborns their first week was also their last and 2.6 million children died before the end of their first month.