Nigerians have fifth worst average life expectancy of 55 years, says report

•‘Women expected to live longer than men’

An average Nigerian is not expected to live beyond his or her 55th birthday, according to the latest figures from the 2019 World Population Review. The new report showed that the average life expectancy of Nigerians was 54.494 years. But a breakdown showed that women are expected to live longer than their male counterparts at 55.414 years against 53.6 years for men.

The 2019 review ranked Nigeria 198th out of 202 countries studied. Nigeria has better life expectancy than only Sierra Leone (199th), Chad (200th), Lesotho (201st) and Central African Republic as the least ranked nation at 202nd position.

Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time an organism is expected to live based on the year of its birth, its current age and other demographic factors, including gender. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth (LEB), which can be defined in two ways. Cohort LEB is the mean length of life of an actual birth cohort (all individuals born a given year) and can be computed only for cohorts born many decades ago. Period LEB is the mean length of life of a hypothetical cohort assumed to be exposed, from birth through death, to the mortality rates observed at a given year.

However, Hong Kong women are expected to live longer at 87.658 years against 81.876 for their men but an average of 84.762 years. Other countries in the first 10 countries with highest average life expectancy include Japan with 84.55 years; Macau, 84.168 years; Switzerland, 83.698 years; Singapore, 83.526 years; Spain, 83.486 years; Italy, 83.424 years; Australia, 83.348 years; Channel Island, 82.992 years and Iceland with 82.92 years.

This is not the first time Hong Kong was declared the longest-lived. Meanwhile, an earlier report published last year by the World Health Organisation (WHO) showed life expectancy in Nigeria, a male given birth to in Nigeria in 2018 was expected to live approximately 54.7 years while a female was expected to live approximately 55.7 years in good health. The data showed Nigeria has a life expectancy ranking of 178 out of 192 ranked countries. However, the average life expectancy at birth in Nigeria was 55.2 years, an improvement from the previous figure, 47.

Also, previous data released by Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) for 2017 had it that females could live for approximately 51 years while males can live for just 47 years. The report showed that residents in Nigeria are liable to die of sicknesses and diseases, as well as other causes.

Causes of death listed in the report are influenza, pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrhoea diseases, stroke, Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), coronary heart disease, liver disease, prostate cancer, diabetes mellitus, maternal conditions, malaria, breast cancer, meningitis, cervical cancer, lung disease and low birth weight.Other causes include accident, road traffic and birth trauma among others.