•L-R Country Director, McArthur, Kole Shettima, President, FPAG, Professor Oladipupo Oladipo, Resident Representative, UNFPA, Vicoria Akyeampong and Country Director, Marie Stoppes Nigeria, Richard Boustread, during the Family Planning Conference in Abuja. Photo: Yinka Shokunbi
By Yinka Shokunbi Assistant Life Editor
No one is certainly sure how many people live in the space called Nigeria. A 2011 World Bank report puts the country’s population at 162. 470,737. The 2012 National Population Commission’s demographic report however states that Nigeria’s population currently stands at 167 million.
But a prediction of the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA) points out that if the country’s annual total fertility rate of 5.7 per woman continues the way it is, the nation’s space would by 2050 be occupied by 390 million people and possibly 720 million people by the end of the 21st century.
In 1960, at Independence, the country’s census puts the population at 45.2 million, the same size as Britain which today has grown only to 63 million. So, what really has gone wrong with the country’s population? Why has national development not matched with the huge population? Is there any strong link between family planning and development?
For four days, about 559 delegates and stakeholders from within and outside the country were gathered under the platform of Family Planning Action Group (FPAG) in the Federal Capital City of Abuja to brainstorm on a number of population issues that have continued to hinder national growth and development.
It was the second Nigeria Family Planning Conference with the theme ‘Population and National Development’ and various experts from various disciplines that cut across health, education, environment, economy and so on, took time to educate other participants, from both public and private sectors, on the need to become more actively involved in ensuring increased awareness, acceptance and use of modern family planning methods and mechanisms as panacea to national development.
Stakeholders at the conference were generally in agreement that the upsurge in the level of insecurity in the country has a direct link and correlation with the challenges posed by the high population of young people “most of whom are unemployed, uncared for, untrained and who felt they are unwanted by the society,” noted Professor Layi Erinosho, President, Health Reform Foundation of Nigeria (HERFON) in a presentation titled: ‘Population and Development: A tale of Two Regions in one Country’.
He noted: “Paradoxically and painfully, the sheer potential strength of Nigeria’s population has turned out to be an albatross. More than 65 per cent of her citizens live below poverty line which is a dollar or two a day.”
He observed the interplay between the physical, mental and social wellbeing of Nigerians on one hand and the level of transparency in governance on the other and concluded that, “Poverty drives fertility because poor women that are non-literate are likely to marry early, have many children in quick succession, and are less likely to have the wherewithal to look after themselves and the children they bear.”
He expressed worry that Nigeria might not attain the set targets of the MDGs due to poor resource allocation and lack of judicious use of the few allocated to development activities.
In his own contribution, Chairman, National Population Commission (NPC), Festus Odimegwu, observed: “These young (Nigerian) people are often products of quantity rather than quality families that were not really planned; they are also made to go through a system that does not have provisions for them because there is no accurate demography to capture how many they are, their needs or even where they are located.”
Odimegwu pointed out that though reproductive issues are personal issues as people have rights to decide for themselves about their lives “but then, what government can do is to educate people, give them information to know what exactly they should decide for themselves and reasons why they must decide, at the personal and individual level.”
The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar represented by the Sarkin Yakin Gagi, Alhaji Sani Umar Jabi observed the tenets of Islam which permits raising well meaning children.
He said: “Family Planning has a special recognition in Islam right from the time of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW).
“It is true that the “azl”-meaning coitus interruptus was widely practiced by the companions of the Prophet and with the permission of Prophet,” said the Sultan.
He added: “Islam does not advocate the bearing of children to the streets becoming victims of negative circumstances in the name of seeking for religious knowledge or other social reasons.”
The Sultan further noted: “For a woman who is medically and professionally advised to adopt family planning due to a recognised need, Islam has no counter argument to that. The total output should be a healthy mother and child that should be able to contribute positively to the development of the society, not street children falling into various spheres of social vices,” said the Sultan.
He however admonished adopting family methods for the sake of preventing poverty alone saying, “it is a clear contradiction to the Islamic viewpoint.”
President FPAG, Professor Oladipupo Oladipo in his presentation entitled: ‘Resource for the Awareness of Population Impacts on Development, the Change We Seek’, submitted that the current high fertility rates among Nigerian families is impacting negatively on the development of the country as a whole and is a contributory factor to the rising profile of insecurity.
According to him, “Fertility impacts development because fertility decline helps many families out of poverty.
“We know that fertility can relate to development because if families have fewer children per woman, then they have fewer mouths to feed. We can see at the family level that having fewer mouths to feed could help to reduce poverty and free more money to educate or help each child. And many analysts, including UNFPA analysts, have done research that shows slower population growth also reduces poverty at the national level,” said Oladipo.
Explaining how population has indeed affected development at the city level in a study of six Nigerian cities – Ibadan, FCT, Ilorin, Kaduna, Zaria and Benin – Deputy Director Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Institute, Bola Kusemiju and Programme Officer, Future Institute, Catherine Adelakun pointed out that the effects of population on education, health, infrastructure and security in the studied cities have shown clearly that if by 2035, a 20 per cent use of modern contraceptive methods is not achieved, the cities might be in serious crises.
Kusemiju said: “Our study of these cities revealed a very high fertility rate of mean 5.3 per woman and it shows one clear thing that if people in the studied city projects do not imbibe the culture of family planning and use family planning contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancies and continued at the rate which they go, it will get to a situation that no one will be able to cope with the population and we are going to be dealing with a huge environmental challenge starting with waste disposal, education, security among others.”
Adding his voice also, National Programme Manager, Partnership for Transforming Health Systems (PATHS2), Mike Egboh noted that Nigeria is already in crisis “with too many children being raised on the streets and with no one taking care of them hence are always willing to die for no just cause.”
He said: “The theme of the conference has opened people’s eyes to understand why we must do family planning, so that the religious connotation, the traditional connotation, the political interpretation of family planning would be removed because people don’t really understand.”
Resident Representative of UNFPA, Victoria Akyeampong pointed out that majority of the population are the youths and that the UNFPA has understanding on the need to actively engage them in driving population issues.
“Early marriage is still a big issue in the Northern part of the country, and the youths should be engaged in discussions that concern their sexuality and be given opportunity to learn and understand what it means to make informed choices; this is because childbirth is not by chance but by choice,” she noted.
Country Director of McArthur Foundation, Kole Shettima submitted that a practical way the organisation is supporting the youths is through strengthening the community health programmes in selected Nigerian Universities.
“For example, at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, we are strengthening their community medicine programme which is now going to be competence based programm to be implemented in collaboration with the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.
“McArthur Foundation has recently just established the first fibre-based internet connectivity in the country, an 82km fibre based internet access to encourage the youths access to the internet while we also do a lot of work around family life in relation to health and productive life programmes which aid development in the country,” Shettima said.
Country Director of Ipas, Dr. Ejike Oji observed the essential role the media need to play in ensuring more positive response to modern contraceptives use and adoption of family planning to enhance national development.
According to Dr. Oji: “Everyone has agreed that bringing the family commodities into the country would not be a problem from now onwards, making sure these get to the states would also not be a problem, but the concept of the last man is what everyone is worried about.
“This is where the media has a purpose. For us to be able to respond to the gaps that would be occurring, we need a very robust monitoring and evaluation framework of which the media can play vital role through investigative journalism to check out whether the commodities taken to the communities are actually being accessed by the women in the quality they deserve and when there are unmet needs, should report same for immediate response.”