Nigerian Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed Working on Limiting Number Of Children Per Mother | Are You In Support?
The Federal Government, through the minister of finance, Zainab Ahmed, declared that it was working with religious and traditional leaders on ways to limit the numbers of children a mother can officially give birth to in Nigeria, for economic purposes.
Speaking on Tuesday during a session at the 24th Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja, Ahmed said the federal government has identified population as one of the challenges confronting the successful implementation of the Economic Growth and Recovery Plan (ERGP).
She acknowledged that religious and traditional leaders are a third force in the development of Nigeria, and that the federal government has been working with them on how to control population growth in the country.
The Minister who disclosed this while responding to questions said:
“We have been engaging traditional rulers, religious leaders and other leaders. Specifically, we have found out that to be able to address one of the great challenges that we identified in the ERGP, which is the growth in our population, we need to engage these institutions. And we hope that with their support, we will get to a point where we can come out with the policy that limits the number of children that a mother can have because that is important for sustaining our growth.
The ERGP is not a new plan, it’s a plan that reviewed what needs assessment, what was in the vision 2020, what is in existing sector plans so because we have taken those plans and used them, the next administration will continue them, which government will not want to continue to improve the infrastructure? What we have in the ERGP are things that any government must do.”
On Monday, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, while addressing the summit also said that research has shown that Nigeria can cut childbirth by 50% by simply educating the girl child.
The dad-of-3 says the government is working on a three-pronged approach to get Nigerian millions of ‘out-of-school’ children back to school.
According to projections by the United Nations, Nigeria’s population will exceed 300 million by 2050.