Prioritise family planning for economic, educational advancement, FG urged

Pathfinder International, a sexual and reproductive health rights based organisation has called on the federal government to prioritize investments through adequate budgeting and implementation of policies that supports family planning.

It says this will help effective population management, economic growth and educational advancement in the country.

The call was made during a 3-day orientation workshop for media practitioners as part of its sustainability plan for the Advance Family Planning (AFP) project.

Its media and communication officer, Bayo Ewuola, while fielding questions from Journalists, stressed the need for existing population to be catered for as well as enable families to cater adequately for the number of children they have.

Ewuola noted that the benefits of child spacing cannot be overemphasized as this means more children especially girls can be enrolled into school and their parents able to cater for them.

“Population management enables the government to take care of the existing population of people, also spacing the children enable parents have time to work and take good care of their children.

“Benefits of child spacing cannot be overemphasized, parents will be able to send their children to school and we will have more girls in school and more money to cater for them,” he said.

He explained further that the workshop was aimed for Journalists to be up skilled to meet up with the digitalization of the mainstream media and ensure a stronger connection with their online audience, in order to increase advocacy for family planning in Nigeria.

“We want Journalists to see themselves as family planning champions who can always change the mentality about family planning because we have a lot of sociocultural issues that surrounds family planning in Nigeria.

“Journalists can use their platforms advance this issues to burst all the myth and misconception around family planning, and also advocate for more budget and release of budget for family planning, create visibility on the issue so that women, girls and men who need family planning services can have access to it,” he explained.

“If there are no funds there would be no procurement of family planning commodities and consumables at health facilities, there will also not be enough staff and capacity of staffs will not be built to provide services. This means that people will keep on giving birth without any form of control,” he added.