20,210 babies born in Nigeria on New Year day - Unicef

To put it in perspective, that means the third largest number added to the world’s population on New Year day are Nigerians or at least babies born in Nigeria.

We assume, though, that this number represents the reported births and may not necessarily have taken into account those births that went unreported (think: home births and villages).

Trivial: Given the choice, would you have liked to be born on a major holiday like on a New Year day?

The children’s fund further reported that worldwide the number of live births on New Year’s day was 386,000 babies were born. Of these numbers, 90 percent are born to parents living in less developed regions.

Furthermore, more than half of these births are estimated to have taken place in nine countries. These are: India, 69,070; China, 44,760; Nigeria, 20,210; Pakistan, 14,910; Indonesia, 13,370; United States, 11,280; Democratic Republic of Congo, 9,400; Ethiopia, 9,020; and Bangladesh, 8,370.

We see, it’s something to do with total population of a country; there’s some logic to that.

While many babies would survive, Unicef sadly noted that many of the those born will not make it past their first day. For instance, in 2016, an estimated 2,600 children died within the first 24 hours every day of the year.

And it doesn’t end there.  “For almost 2 million newborns, their first week was also their last. In all, 2.6 million children died before the end of their first month.

“Among those children, more than 80 per cent died from preventable and treatable causes such as premature birth, complications during delivery, and infections like sepsis and pneumonia.”