With a growing population tipping towards 200 million people in 2015, experts are beginning to express fears about the capacity of Nigeria in managing such population amid poverty and burden of healthcare.This has prompted the Federal  Government to subtly suggest birth control for its citizens with serious backlash and dichotomy between proponents and opponents. PUAL OBI writes

With a growing population tipping towards 200 million people in 2015, experts are beginning to express fears about the capacity of Nigeria in managing such population amid poverty and burden of healthcare.This has prompted the Federal  Government to subtly suggest birth control for its citizens with serious backlash and dichotomy between proponents and opponents. PUAL OBI writes 
Is population Nigeria’s biggest problem? Whatever answer that is likely to come out, fears are being expressed concerning Nigeria’s rising population. From a little number of 55 million people in the 1950s, before independence, Nigeria’s population grew astronomically to about 88 million in the 1990s. Today, that figure is pecked around 167 million people. Observers believed that high population will ever remain an impediment to her development until something is done about it. In the 1990s, the Ibrahim Babaginda military government even attempted compulsory family planning for Nigerians. A policy that was greeted by strong opposition and criticisms.

In the real sense, population issues are mostly politicised in the country. Census figures to a large extend determines the revenue sharing formula among the three tiers of government. It also forms the basis upon which states and local governments are created, including the delimitation of constituencies for elections and legislative purposes. And with a federal system that is more of distributive or somehow called by critics as ‘feeding-bottle’ federalism as opposed to fiscal federalism, population figures are critical if not controversial.

Aside the political undertone of population, a high population carries with it many burdens that may even over power the state in handling. An increased population for Nigeria will also over stretch services and infrastructure. In all the challenges that come with high population density, poor healthcare remains the biggest headache. In the long run, it may lead to total collapsed of the social system. These are the fears being expressed by the government, prompting government officials to conceived the idea of family planning again. The idea was first muted in far away Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where Minister of State for Health, Dr. Muhammed Pate hinted that the Federal Government was considering adopting family planning and birth control as measure to check the growing population.

At a broader summit in London last June co-hosted by the UK Government’s Department for International Development, the United Nations Fund on Population (UNFPA) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, experts on reproductive health and family planning around the world gathered to appraise the issue. Pate would further relate Nigeria’s position on the issue. According to him, “we are committed to achieving the goal of a contraceptive prevalence rate of 36 per cent by 2018. Achieving this goal will mean averting at least 31,000 maternal deaths. Over 700,000 mothers will be prevented from injuries or long-term complications due to childbirth.”

The minister also informed the gathering that “in addition to our current annual commitment of $3 million for the procurement of reproductive health commodities, we are now committing to provide an additional $8,350,000 annually over the next four years, making a total of $33,400,000 over the next four years. This additional amount will be programmed within the existing projection for the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme funds for Maternal and Child Health.
“In the case of family planning in Nigeria, women are more than 10 times likely to have access to family planning services (35 versus 3.2 per cent) regardless of geography, ethnicity or religion. We are committed to increasing the awareness and demand for family planning and reproductive health services by women regardless of their socio-economic status. In our quest to save one million lives in Nigeria by 2015, we consider all lives have equal value,” Pate said.

Further, this unprecedented effort showcased innovative partnerships and leadership at the country level, empowering women to reach their full potential. The Summit underscored the importance of access to contraceptives as both a right and a transformational health and development priority.

The UK Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell, said: “This is a breakthrough for the world’s poorest girls and women which will transform lives, now and for generations to come. The commitments made at the summit today will support the rights of women to determine freely, and for themselves, whether, when and how many children they have. “Enabling an additional 120 million women in the world’s poorest countries to access and use contraception, something women in the developed world take for granted, will save millions of lives and enable girls and women to determine their own futures.” By 2020, the collective efforts announced today will result in 200,000 fewer women dying in pregnancy and childbirth, more than 110 million fewer unintended pregnancies, over 50 million fewer abortions, and nearly three million fewer babies dying in their first year of life.

Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said: “When I travel and talk to women around the world they tell me that access to contraceptives can often be the difference between life and death. Today is about listening to their voices, about meeting their aspirations, and giving them the power to create a better life for themselves and their families.”

The summit has raised the resources to deliver contraceptives to an additional 120 million women which is estimated to cost $4.3 billion. More than 20 developing countries made bold commitments to address the policy, financing and delivery barriers to women accessing contraceptive information, services and supplies. Donors made new financial commitments to support these plans amounting to $2.6 billion – exceeding the summit’s financial goal. Access to safe, effective methods of contraception is considered one of the most cost-effective investments a country can make in its future. Studies show that every $1 invested in family planning services yields up to $6 in savings on health, housing, water, and other public services.

Contraceptive use also leads to more education and greater opportunities for girls, helping to end the cycle of poverty for them and their families. Up to a quarter of girls in Sub-Saharan Africa drop out of school due to unintended pregnancies, stifling their potential to improve their lives and their children’s lives. The summit galvanised the global community to create transformational change, calling for innovative solutions and robust public-private partnerships that put women at the heart of the equation.
Commitments announced, gave women more options, easier access, and improved health care. The summit supports and builds on the momentum created by the UN Secretary General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, “Every Woman, Every Child,” and innovative public-private and civil society partnerships developed through the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition. The summit also aligns with the broader framework established by the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) almost 20 years ago.

Beyond the razzmatazz of family planning and contraceptives, back home in Nigeria, the government is very much aware of the difficulties with such policy. Obviously, selling the programme to the population of Nigerian conservatives is a hard nut to crack. Chief among the opponents of family planning is the Christian community and the Islamic society. The Catholic Church leads the Christian group and is vehemently opposed to birth control. The church itself sees contraceptives as a mismatch to what it considers a presumptive problem in child bearing. Couple with the African belief system, contraceptives and birth control are alien to many Africans, a situation that will hamper the implementation of family planning.
But speaking with THISDAY, the Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, Most Rev. Jonathan Onaiyekan said the Christian community is not completely against family planning, what it is against is a deliberate and destructive form of family planning and birth control. “In this matter, there is a lot of confusion, sometimes, when supporters of family planning say something, it sounds so nice but in the real sense it means something else. The Catholic Church is not in anyway promoting irresponsible procreation without reasonable concern in taking care of children. Of course, there ought to be some caution and calculation, but most of these people supporting birth control do not rely on the positive aspect, on this issue of family planning, they should not only calculate on the basis of economics,” Onaiyekan said.

“We are not against birth control, what we are against is the wrong way of doing it,” the former President of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) told THISDAY. “We do not believe our country is over populated, but this people encourage the use of condoms, abortion and contraceptive pills by married couples that is what we are against. The billions of dollars they are investing can be use to liberate people from poverty. Why are they not spending these billions to develop our economy,” he asked. “Of course, many government officials at the Ministry of Health and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are hungry to access these funds,  they don’t care about what it all means, they don’t care about killing unborn babies so long as they get millions of dollars as funding,” he added.

Amid these stiff opposition to family planning, government officials reasoned that an untamed population growth like that of Nigeria is just another social emergency that need to be addressed squarely through birth control. And with bogus dollars funding across the Atlantic, it is tempting to abstain from doing nothing about birth control. Like the Archbishop posited, many NGOs will be waiting to catch on such funds. But the snag is that, Nigeria is a tough terrain to market family planning ideology. As it stands, the fight is far from over even as the controversy rages on.