Poverty: Why Having Smaller Family Now Important for Nigerians – CISLAC
As the country’s population continues to rise geometrically, the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, CISLAC, said the time has come for Nigerians to begin to embrace the idea of smaller family to boycott ravaging poverty, youth unemployment, child mortality and other socio-economic upheavals.
Executive Director of CISLAC, Awwal Musa Rafsanjani, disclosed this at Nigeria Population Conservation organized by their Centre in partnership with Population Matters.
While population affects every facet of societal development, Rafsanjani said discussion around population remains uncommon in Nigeria; and this puts Nigeria’s population which is projected to reach 400 million by 2050, doubling the current estimate, at a demographic nightmare.
“We cannot conceal the fact that with the current inadequate awareness on consequences of population at citizenry and policy levels as well as the unattended impact on national planning, Nigeria has not efficiently harnessed its population to achieve development goals.
“This fact has been buttressed by multiplier effects of youth unemployment, insecurity, inaccessible healthcare services, food insecurity, education inequality and other challenges that undermine socio-economic development of Nigeria.
Regrettably, Nigeria is among the top five countries in the world with the highest under-five mortality rates.
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“In addition to the general leading causes of under-five mortality, studies have highlighted the survival probabilities, the impact of socio-economic, demographic and environmental factors as major threats to the survival of under-five mortality in Nigeria.
While a significant function of girl child education in Nigeria is to provide her with diverse basic knowledge, skills, and training which contribute to personal development and the overall national development, more than 50% of girls are not attending school at the basic education level, while 1 million girls drop out between the first and last year of primary school (UNICEF).
“In addition, Nigeria accounts for 20% of all out-of-school children in sub-Saharan Africa, with nearly 20 million out-of-school children (Malala Fund). Likewise, in Nigeria, about 53.40% of youths are unemployed according to youth unemployment rates released by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2022. This again exposes our country to most of the social crimes perpetuated by youths including the accelerated level of prostitution, armed robbery, rape and all facets of violence can be largely attributed to the incidence of unemployment of youths.
“As a result, the Nigeria Population Conversation project is necessitated by the need to engender people-oriented participation and harvest perception on population to shape policy direction for well-informed national planning to achieve the overall demographic advantage for sustainable development. More importantly, a wide gap has been observed in population literacy at individual levels; and this poses further challenges to demographic accountability, as the main stakeholders in Nigeria Population Conversation.
“It is worthy of a note that active participation by Nigerians across the six geo-political zones in the Population Perception Survey report that will be launched here today is a clear indication of citizens’ readiness for constructive conversation on population and its impacts on their well-being as well as living standards. This without doubt will serve as a baseline for further conversation on population at all levels in Nigeria and beyond,” he said.