By Igbawase Ukumba
The Emir of Awe, Alhaji Isa Abubakar II, recently adviced his subjects to embrace family planning, just as he charged the government to create more awareness on the gains of spacing.
He also cautioned his subjects against marrying many wives above their personal income to avoid improper attention to family responsibility.
The Awe monarch gave the caution at his palace during an interaction with members of the Media Action for Family Planning in Nasarawa (MAFPN), who were on a sensitisation tour of his domain of Awe Local Government Area of the state on family planning.
Acccording to him, “nobody can stop anybody from procreation, but most husbands have not been living up to their responsibility of catering for the proper wellbeing of their families due to marrying of many wives above their income.
“However, in the northern part of the country, religion permits us to marry many wives. But child bearing deteriorates health condition of child bearing mothers, hence I support the idea of child spacing method being championed by the MAFPN.”
The monarch therefore decried at situations where some mothers would be breast feeding their children and at the same time pregnant for the next child, a situation he said makes such mothers look older than their real age.
He concluded that if government had created awareness on the benefits of child spacing before the introduction of the child spacing method in the country, the acceptability of the method would have been more as compared to the present situation.
However, Officer-in-Charge of the Primary Healthcare Clinic of Old Awe town, Mrs Ammagai Arigu, argued that the non-acceptance of child spacing method by women in the Awe community was due to some privileges the women get from their husbands during naming ceremonies of their new born children.
She said: “You know we are in Hausa land, therefore some of the women said if they space their child bearing rate, they will forfeit some certain privileges attached to child bearing, such as meat, from their husbands.
“Some of them said they wouldn’t want to miss such opportunity from their husbands because anytime they give birth, they are entitled to some meat from the ram slaughtered for the naming ceremony of the new child they have given birth to.”
Earlier, Leader of the MAFPN, Mr. Joseph Baba Edoh, told the traditional ruler of Awe that the mission of the team in his domain was to create awareness to people on the benefits of family planning in the society.
