TheCable

The National Population Commission (NPC) says Nigeria’s population growth can be effectively managed by promoting girl-child education.

Margaret Edison, director of population management at NPC, spoke on Monday while featuring on ‘Good Morning Nigeria’, a Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) programme.

She said the low acceptance of contraceptives by women across the country has contributed to the high fertility rate and population growth.

“We have a youthful population that needs education, healthcare and needs to be engaged in the labour market,” she said.

“That is why the revised national population policy is emphasising fertility management, birth spacing, education of our children — most especially the girl-child.”

“The more education the girl-child has, the less her fertility rate would be. She will marry when she would want to marry. She would be educated enough to know the number of children that she would have, she would be able to determine the spacing of her children so that our gross domestic product (GDP) and population growth would be the same.

“The current estimated population of Nigeria is over 211 million and the growth rate per annum is 2.6 percent.

“That means the Nigerian population is growing at 2.6 percent annually but this growth is national and across the states. We have different growth rates, particularly in the northern states.

“We have growth rates that are much higher than that. The average number of children a woman would have in the north is beyond seven children while in the south we have 4.5.

“We have been experiencing high fertility rate and low contraceptive prevalence rate. Those are the things that are driving the population growth in Nigeria.”