Birth control in Nigeria?
It was the first visit by the UN Chief to Nigeria since assumption of office in January 2007. The visit was seen by many as a positive development because such was an opportunity for Ban Kimoon to assess government efforts in ensuring access to health care for the citizenry, especially to women and children. However, […]
It was the first visit by the UN Chief to Nigeria since assumption of office in January 2007. The visit was seen by many as a positive development because such was an opportunity for Ban Kimoon to assess government efforts in ensuring access to health care for the citizenry, especially to women and children. However, it was with mixed feelings Nigerians received the warning handed down by Mr. Ban Kimoon’s special adviser, Prof Jeffrey Sachs, who chillingly declared that the current Nigerian population figure of 150 million could balloon to 730 million by 2100.
What Nigerians found most un-soothing from Prof Jeffrey’s indefensible alarm is his remark that “…Nigerians should work towards attaining a maximum of three children per family”. We are prompted to react to this proposal because this was how, in the past; ideas inimical to the well being of Nigerians were sold to the gullible minds of our very unpatriotic leaders. Before many Nigerians would discover what our lawmakers are discussing in their chambers, a bill seeking to limit the number of children per family would have been passed in to law. Have you forgotten how the bill seeking approval for the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to fund SIM card registration was passed by the sixth session of Nigeria’s National Assembly?
Nonetheless, we expected Mr. Ban Kimoon and his adviser to have put Nigeria within the context of an African country with economic and socio-cultural peculiarities; a country where life is threatened by several challenges of survival including high infant and maternal mortality rate, endemic poverty and joblessness. Prof Jeffrey Sachs should have, before basing his hypothesis on the premise of high birth rate, taken time to ask health officials to educate him on death rate in Nigeria. There is tendency that death rate in the country, if not higher, is not lower than birth rate.
Why wouldn’t more Nigerians die every 24 hours more than the number of registered births daily when there is limited access to primary health care; when only 55 percent of the population can access clean water; when 70 percent of the population lives below the poverty line; when the greater majority of the country’s youths are unemployed? To buttress our assertion, Mr. Ban Kimoon, while inspecting the Maitama District Hospital in Abuja during his visit, noted that “1,000 women die daily in pregnancy and childbirth as do 22,000 children die each day from preventable diseases”. How then, given this death toll, could someone advocate “birth control” for a developing African country like Nigeria? It is not too surprising that the prescription is coming from a person working for the interest of the most powerful nations in the world. In any case, it is un-Godly to limit number of children per family.
It is un-Godly because birth control is not in the scriptures of the two most popular religions in Nigeria; Islam and Christianity. The essence and the utmost object of marriage is procreation. God states in the very first chapter of the holy Bible; Genesis: chapter 1 verse 28 “And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be Fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…”. The greatest fear of the proponents of birth control borders on economic motives. Allah (SWT) states in Qur’an 11:6 “There is no moving creature on earth but its sustenance dependeth on God: He knoweth the time and place of its definite abode and its temporary deposit: all is in clear record”. As for those who take the life of unborn children through abortion or other birth control measures, Allah (SWT) warns in Qur’an 17;31 “kill not your children for fear of want: we shall provide sustenance for them as well as for you. Verily the killing of them is a great sin”.
Let us remember that if sustenance were a product of human intellect or other special abilities, no any other animal apart from man would have survived on earth. Yet, we see birds, goats and other animals (who certainly have no bank accounts or farms or food store) eating and drinking to their satisfaction each day of their existence. Let us commit to our memory that only God has the prerogative to determine how many children a man or woman should have. No matter the approaches adopted by man with a view to “controlling birth”, nothing will ever stop a child decreed to come in to this world by Allah (SWT) from being conceived and given birth to.
Ban Kimoon is in a better position, as an Asian from Korea, to preach and convince the world of the wealth in population; using China as an illustration. With a quarter of the world population, China produces the food consumed by her citizens without necessarily depending on exports from other countries as do Nigeria. Furthermore, were it not for China that introduced and flooded African markets with low profile and double-SIM phones, GSM handsets would still have remained a dream on the minds of many Nigerians.
There is no part of the world today where you do not find Chinese products which are comparatively cheaper than manufactured goods from other parts of the developed world. The relative cheap price of Chinese products cannot be isolated from the cheap labor offered by a swarming population; meaning that population entails wealth. In spite of her huge population, China is one of the leading and powerful economies of this century; a country that lends money to other developed economies including the United States of America. With a population of about 150 million which still puts us a long way behind China, Nigeria unlike China, has turned her God-given resources in to curse rather than blessed wealth.
Nigeria, like many other African countries, is indeed not the right place for the propagation of birth control. Ban Kimoon and his special adviser should have analyzed the problems and prospects of the socio-economic state of Nigeria from the perspective of the kind of governance orchestrated over the years by a crop of wicked leaders in the country. Instead of recommending birth control measures for Nigerians as a way of tackling the developmental challenges bedeviling citizens, Prof Sachs should have advised government to improve upon the living conditions of Nigerians in a way that would guarantee unhindered access to primary health care, access to clean water at no cost, reduce poverty and provide jobs. We pray to Allah (SWT) to guide us against subscribing to any ideology (western or eastern) that contradicts divine principles, amin.