The Minister of Health. Professor Isaac Adewole has said the Country’s population growth is worrisome and if not checked, would affect the nation’s economy and development in the nearest future.
He made this known in Abuja at the formal presentation of the topic “The Relevance of Operations Research in Family Planning Programming in Nigeria”, in a report study by Marie Stopes Nigeria.
Adewole, represented by Director, Family Health Department, Ministry of Health, Dr. Adebimpe Adebiyi, said it’s a known fact that at the rate the population is increasing, it is expedient to task-shift the delivery of family planning services in Nigeria to Community Health Extension Workers (CHEWS).
“CHEWS are to be regarded as an important cadre of contraceptive implant providers, readily available for the expansion of access to family planning services in Nigeria.”
He called for the use of CHEWS to tackle the shortage and misdistribution of personnel needed for the provision of access to family planning services in rural communities and other hard to reach areas.
He further urged stakeholders to collaborate with Ministry of Health to expand access to contraceptive implants and to ensure that the country makes quantum leaps in the use of evidence-based interventions towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Minister is concerned about the population of the Country and how it would have a negative effect on the economy, but there are some Countries with high population growth whose economy is balanced.
Nigeria has the highest expected population increase in the world. It is expected that between 2010 and 2050, Nigeria’s population would have added 231 million more people. The United States is the only wealthy Nation in the list of top ten Nations by population growth rate, standing at the 5th position and is expected to add 90 million persons, less than half of what Nigeria is expected to add.
Nigeria presently has the 7th largest population in the world and will be the 3rd most populated by 2050, according to UN projections. The country’s population is projected to almost tripple to 433 million. This is despite the fact that 17 out of every 1,000 Nigerians die yearly, the second highest death rate in the world.
Yet while the world is expected to reach a population of 9.7 billion in 2050, studies have shown that the Earth can produce food for 280 billion people.
Robert de Neufville, who is Director of Communications of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, says
“Promising technologies that could increase the food supply and reduce our impact on planet’s environment are in development or are already available,”
But then
“a substantial majority of the world’s energy and land supports a wealthy minority of the population.”
Therefore, de Neufville argues,
“what will determine our fate, to a large extent, is not whether the world economy grows, but how it grows.”
