Mathematical Comparative study of Nigeria’s Northern and Southern Population Growth for Equitable Resource Allocation and Holistic National Development

Abstract

Nigeria is one of the developing countries having a humongous population growth. Knowing the population size and growth of her geopolitical zones are becoming importance especially to government as size of a population is good parameter for economic development. The aim of this study is to compare the Nigeria’s Northern and Southern population growth for equitable revenue allocation and holistic national development. To achieve this, helpful mathematical models such as Malthusian and Geometric are used to predict each zone. And the results of these models are validated using mathematical model called Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). Analysis revealed that Northern population is better predicted using exponential growth model and population is estimated to be 131062796 in 2022 with the growth rate 3.67%. On the other hand, Geometric model predicts Southern population better, with the estimate population 110779180 in 2022 and the growth rate of 3.2%.