By Joyce Remi- Babayeju
As the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, opened the 5th National Family Planning Conference in Abuja he said that Nigeria risks additional 68 million populations by 2030 due to high fertility rate.
Osinbajo who was represented by Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, said “if Nigeria’s prevailing annual population growth rate 3.2 percent persists, we will have an additional 68 million people by 2030, and will be the third most populous country in the world by 2050.”
He added that estimated 63 percent of Nigeria’s population is below 25 years; with a significant segment of the population being sexually active and needing education and guidance to wisely navigate the issues of equality, choice, and contraception.
He disclosed that the Federal Government’s economic policies aimed at making lives comfortable to the nation’s population, the administration is committed to making family planning commodities available to those who need them.
He said the nation failed to plan for its future when it raked in fortunes from oil and other revenue sources in recent past.
“Between 2011 and 2015 when Nigeria enjoyed some of the highest revenues in history, and overtook South Africa to become the largest economy in Africa, there was no commensurate impact in poverty alleviation and improvement of wellbeing,” the Vice president said.
Speaking on the theme of the conference: ‘Investment, Innovation and Inclusiveness’, he said, investment, innovation and inclusiveness are three very critical keys for unlocking the very beneficial contributions of family planning to Nigeria’s ambition of reaping its entire potential demographic dividend.
“This demographic dividend is, of course, the catch-all term for the benefits and potential realizable from attaining the optimal age structure in a population. In the case of Nigeria, this optimal age structure would mean a combination of declining fertility and a simultaneous rise in the working age population. Our main challenge, evidently, is with our current fertility rates.”
According to him, investing in family planning has been proven to be smart, cost-effective, and life-saving; and is especially critical in a country like Nigeria with a very young and rapidly growing population.
He argued further that achieving the SDGs and Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 depends significantly on how well sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and young people are prioritized.
He said the nation must clearly insist on including young people at the very heart of its policies and its deployment of resources to achieve these policies.
While urging participants at the conference to develop evidence-based approaches to population management, Osinbajo noted that time was no longer waiting for the nation.
We must act and move fast, because our challenges themselves are not simply sitting and waiting around to be solved. They are evolving and adapting in increasingly complicated forms, and our responses and solutions must keep up, he explained
The three day conference has representatives of local and international organizations working on family planning, experts from medical field, and government delegations among others.
