Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole has warned of dire consequence of the country’s growing population rate.
Adewole stressed that if the country fails to do anything about it now, by 2050 Nigeria will be the third largest country in the world.
Nigeria currently ranked 10th in the world, with about 180 million people.
Adewole who spoke at the 5th National Family Planning stakeholders consultative meeting in Abuja yesterday said the country cannot afford an over bloated population.
While stressing that the country is very unique with a massive population of about 180 million people, the minister said unfortunately, the population demography is disturbing as the country is producing more consumers than producers. This country he stressed must change the tide.
He said: “If we do nothing by 2050 Nigeria will be the third largest country in the world. We cannot afford that.
“The land mass of Nigeria is just a little bit bigger than Texas, and so you can imagine as of now we are tenth in the world, our population will then Increase third and yet the land size is not increasing and think that will explain the type of challenges we are facing. We must do something.”
While noting that Indonesia has achieved dramatic reduction in fertility growth, still we have not done so much in Nigeria.
While noting that the government would want to see an average of four children per family, he however said that most men want more children.
“We would want to see an average of about four, but what is worrisome, I have said it severally, is that Nigerian men want more children, not even the women who carry the pregnancy,” he said.
Jokingly, the minister suggested that may be for once, may be men should even let the men be made to carry the pregnancy; adding, “Carrying this load that they cannot even bring down for one minute for nine months, then their fertility desire will drop drastically.”
This notwithstanding, he said the government has a clear statement that the country must adopt a strategic approach in population management.
He said, “One of the quick fixes to maternal and child mortality is to adopt family planning in an aggressive manner. Would eliminate a third of maternal mortality by adopting aggressive family planning Strategy. And when the mother survives, the child is very likely to survive.”
The country he also said “must increase contraceptive prevalent and we must increase end users and improve service provider capacity and make sure that ensure we don’t have stockout.
“Not only that we must really offer people a variety of options. One of the reasons why people really don’t embrace family planning is that there is not really many options available and the health provider must be less judgmental. We must educate our health providers,” he said.
On the 2018 budget, he said what we are asking for is that health budget be increased to 8% from the current 4 percent and hopefully in two to three years’ time we get to 15% in line with the Africa declaration.
He also assured the gathering that the country will do something different to move forward.
Quoting late professor Babatunde Oshotimehin, he said “we head towards demographic disaster or dividend. And I think we all agree that we move towards dividend.
He also noted that health is part of the economic recovery plan, stressing that “It is critical to have an effective population management strategy and enhance opportunity for all Nigerians. It is now left for us to say what is going to be that effective population management strategy.
“We need to reduce the number of babies if that boat will move faster. We rather have more men or women than babies.”
The royal fathers in attendance including Oni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi said the issue of family plunging must be taking seriously. He called for implementation of programmes, as he stressed that it is beyond just talking.
Oba Ogunwusi warned that population growth not planned will become a liability.
Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar on his part said no religion support uncontrolled birth.
Sultan who was represented by Emir of Jiwa, Alhaji Idris Musa said the country must move fast to put the growing population under control.
