By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Tech mogul, Elon Musk says Nigeria recorded four million more births than the European Union put together in 2025, citing data from his artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok.
“Nigeria alone had 4 million more births than the entire EU last year”, the world’s richest man said in a post on his X account on Saturday.
The Grok-generated data says Nigeria recorded an estimated 7.8 million births in 2025, compared with 3.5 million births across the European Union, leaving the oil-rich West African nation with approximately four million more births.
The figure indicates Nigeria’s population growth, which analysts believe is not in tandem with its economic output, compared with the European Union, an influential player in global economy.
Earlier this year, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said 14 million Nigerian children had their births officially registered over the previous two years, marking progress in legal identity coverage.
The most populous black nation, Nigeria has faced economic pressure in recent times, which has affected households and small businesses, arising from the 2023 fuel subsidy removal by the President Bola Tinubu administration, as well as the unification of the exchange window, which experts say sparked inflation.
Nigeria’s poverty rate stood at 63 per cent in 2025 as households faced rising living costs, World Bank data says.
At the 7th Africa Emerging Markets Forum (EMF) hosted by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in Abuja recently, Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Taiwo Oyedele said the current administration had completed the difficult work of stabilising the economy and must now ensure ordinary Nigerians began to feel the benefits
According to him, macroeconomic stability alone is insufficient if it fails to improve living standards.
He said, “Our task now is converting that stability into investment, investment into productivity, productivity into decent jobs, decent jobs into incomes that Nigerian families can actually feel in a tangible way.
“A reform that shows up on national statistics but not on the household dining table hasn’t finished its job.”
