According to health experts, Nigeria’s insecurity problem is due to the country’s population growth.
Lack of family planning, particularly in rural areas, is to blame for the high rate of fertility, since people create more than they can cope with.
They stated this at a one-day workshop for media held in Abuja over the weekend by the Association for the Advancement of Family Planning in partnership with the Planned Parenthood Federation of Nigeria.
The Chairman of the Association of the Advancement of the Family Planning (AAFP), Dr. Ejike Oji said, “Nigeria right now has fertility rate of 5.3 while the world is 5.2. That means Nigeria only reduce by 2 since the world came together. There are three key things you notice in a country that is in trouble with it’s fertility rate, right now our dependency ratio is about 85.5% that means the people who are producing what other people are using is less than 20%, which is a red flag.
“70% of Nigeria population are dependent what it means is that the young people who are suppose to work are without job, hungry and want sex.
“There is no part of this country that have not seen killings because politicians, individuals are recruiting these jobless youths to cause problems.
“It is imperative that by 2025 the country must reduce its fertility rate”.
He also lamented that, “Couple with the fact that Nigeria has one of the highest number of out of school children in the world. That means you have huge number of young Nigerians that are hungry. Some professionals are now moving out of the country, Our young people are leaving in hundreds. That is brain drain”.
He further stated that they raised alarm on Nigeria’s population explosion, saying, ” 10 years ago we were shouting it that, if Nigeria doesn’t do something about the population explosion, there will be crisis situation and it is happening now. Our population has grown so tremendously in the last few years, 2006, we said we were 120 million, then we projected 2.5% population growth , that means Nigeria population is about 220 million.
“A lot of people refer to China and India but their economy is doing so well. If we look at the history of China and India, they used to be one of the poorest Nations until they did something. Nigeria fertility rate is the problem.
If you look at countries that are developed, they are countries that have done something about their fertility rate”.
Collaborating Oji’s point, Dr. Okai Haruna stated that, “It is lack of family planning that is leading us to all these insecurity crisis. People are having children they cannot take care of. We are not saying people should not have kids but have the number of you can care for.
“It is imperative for the government to take the issue of family planning very seriously because it impacts on all sphere of life”.
More so, the Executive Director of International Society of Media in Public Health, Chief Moji Makanjuola urged media practitioners to speak to issues on reproductive health.
Saying, they need to preach the economic, sociology and the psychology of it.
