Embrace smaller family to avert ravaging poverty, socio-economic upheavals- CISLAC

By Joy Baba – Yesufu

The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy (CISLAC)/Transparency International in Nigeria (TI) has said that the time has come for Nigerians to begin to embrace the idea of smaller family to avert ravaging poverty, youth unemployment, child mortality and other socio-economic upheavals adding that population affects every facet of societal development.
The origination also said the discussion around population remains uncommon in Nigeria; and this puts Nigeria’s population which is projected to reach 400 million by 2050, doubling the current estimate, at a demographic nightmare.
Executive Director CISLAC/TI Auwal Ibrahim Musa (RAFSANJANI) stated this on Tuesday in Abuja, at a Nigeria Population conversation seminar.
He said the same burning desire for sustainable growth brought to the fore, this foremost groundbreaking gathering with the theme “Nigeria Population Conversation Seminar” organized by Population Matters UK and CISLAC/TI-Nigeria.
Musa further said in Nigeria, about 53.40% of youths are unemployed according to youth unemployment rates released by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2022 while maintaining that this exposes our country to most of the social crimes perpetuated by youths including the accelerated level of prostitution, armed robbery, rape and all facets of violence which can be largely attributed to the incidence of unemployment of youths.
According to him “As a result, the Nigeria Population Conversation project is necessitated by the need to engender people-oriented participation and harvest perception on population to shape policy direction for well-informed national planning to achieve the overall demographic advantage for sustainable development.
“More importantly, wide gap has been observed in population literacy at individual levels; and this poses further challenges to demographic accountability, as the main stakeholders in Nigeria Population Conversation.
“This fact has been buttressed by multiplier effects of youth unemployment, insecurity, inaccessible to healthcare services, food insecurity, education inequality and other challenges that undermine socio-economic development of Nigeria.
“Regrettably, Nigeria is among the top five countries in the world with the highest under-five mortality rates. In addition to the general leading causes of under-five mortality, studies have highlighted the survival probabilities, the impact of socio-economic, demographic and environmental factors as major threats to the survival of under-five mortality in Nigeria”.