With over 200 million people, Nigeria is the most-populated country in Africa. Its population is multiplying at a startling rate.
However, this fact has not changed the narrative about child spacing and the chain of issues associated with it in the country’s affairs.
Human procreation is rising astronomically in Nigeria, compounding the challenges encountered policy planners to anticipate and plan accurately about sustainable development.
Nigerians seem persistently adamant to all advices to space child bearing, albeit according to their religious or any other cultural injunctions, for its numerous advantages to the parents, their immediate communities and the country as a whole.
Childbirth spacing will help to give a timely health impact for the women and adequate parental control of children, especially at this time of hardship and economic downfall.
The parent should consider the health matters of the women, as it was discovered that regular rampant childbirth can affect proper blood circulation in women, disfigure their structures and weaken them, reducing their energy to give birth directly from the womb.
Uncontrolled childbirth increases the hardship in managing a family, according to some investigations. For instance, it is hard for a person who gives birth to 17 children with about thirty thousand nairas as a monthly income to manage the family.
It is particularly difficult for the person to handle the matters relating to the education of his children and his wife’s needs. In this situation, household problems become compounded and management of family issues becomes increasingly difficult.
The childbirth control will, undoubtedly, help to maintain the growing population of Nigeria and facilitate socioeconomic development.
This is the time for embracing childbirth spacing by Nigerians who cannot afford the necessary needs, gain lucrative employment, sponsor their children’s education and afford a comfortable standard of living.
A recent report from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has shown that about 133 Nigerians are drowned in poverty over lack of proper education, malnourishment, lack of industrial development and inadequate investment to rise the skill acquisition program.
Without a doubt, the excessive population is the main background for all those challenges that encircled the country. Childbirth control and spacing can be a very important factor in running stable conditions in Nigeria.
With Nigerians embracing childbirth spacing, the children will have access to adequate healthcare, cutting the family expenses to a very affordable level.
If Nigerians adopt child spacing to about 2-3 years, it will enhance the effective livelihood of the people.
Child spacing guarantees proper education for the children. Proper education kills insecurity and restored peace and security which guarantees and accelerates economic growth and prosperity.
Without these, Nigeria would continue to suffer a multitude of setbacks.
This article was written by Samuel T James of the Mass Communication Department of the University of Maiduguri.
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