By Hassan Zaggi
The Coordinator, Africa Health Budget Network (AHBN), Dr Aminu Magashi, has lamented that only 22 per cent of Nigerian women use contraceptives.
It therefore, means that a whooping 88 per cent of married women in Nigeria do not used the commodity.
He disclosed this at an interaction with the media in Abuja, yesterday.
He, therefore, called on the federal government to evolve modalities that will encourage women increase the uptake of the family planning commodities in all parts of the country.
Dr. Magashi called for the involvement of both religious, traditional and community leaders in creating awareness on the immense health benefits of family planning.
According to him, “We need to work very hard, we also need to change the narrative. What I always tell people, we should not quit doing the right thing, helping the society address issues in our country, states and communities.
“We need to be very proactive, work with the emirs.
“We are not talking about controlling population, but we are talking about managing it to a level that you will be able to cater for everybody towards sustainable development goals.
“If we need to work with the Emirs, Pastors, Malams, the Imams so that they will understand the implication of having more pregnancies making women to be exposed to a lot of danger, infection and excessive bleeding.”
While appealing to all arms of government to be involved in the awareness creation, Dr. Magashi said: “We are calling on the President, the National Assembly and the entire executives to look at the value of family planning to the economic development in addressing socio-cultural challenges, in managing the population in ensuring that families have children they can cater for so that the children can go to school and can be catered for medically and socially.
“We need to ensure that family planning commodities are everywhere in Nigeria. Both in rural and urban settlements, in every facility including the primary, secondary and the tertiary.”
He also called on those he described as senior and respected people in Nigeria to embrace the discussion of family planning so that “our society will improve medically, socially and also we will be able to address socio cultural barriers in our society.”
