• Danger looms: 26,039 babies born in Nigeria on New Year Day!
As the global community ushered in the New Year heralding a new decade, there were also new babies born across the world in what to the family units is an added source of joy. Babies signal the continuity of the human species and parents and communities put great value on their arrivals.
In Nigeria alone, UNICEF reports that 26,039 babies were recorded as New Year babies. For a country that is very poor in data collection and demographic statistics, citizenship and immigration records, this number might be very far from the real figures of those born on that day.
UNICEF must have got its data from field workers who in turn might have just taken available records from towns and cities, and probably from registered hospitals that they could access. We are aware that more than half the country’s population live in the rural areas where they lack access to clinics and hospitals and written records.
Deliveries in those rural communities are still handled largely by untrained local midwives with neither the modern training nor infrastructure to aid safe deliveries. In the same vein, because most governments consider those communities ‘hard-to-reach’, no one bothers about collecting data from there. In essence, most deaths and deliveries, including the one under reference, are never recorded. So, the additional daily births on the New Year day and other days are never factored into most statistical details by either the National Population Commission or most global agencies like UNICEF.
It is equally an indictment on the nation that it takes a UN agency to release such data no matter how inaccurate it might have been. The population of any country is that country’s business because planning and policy directions are supposed to be tied to demographic details for a better national growth in the short, medium and long terms. No nation relies mainly on assumption of its population.
The UNICEF figures equally raise the red flag for Nigerian governments to see the need to address the ballooning population and dwindling productivity that signpost a developmental disaster. If that number of babies were born in just a day, the number is in the news because of the significance of the day. More babies are born almost every second nationally.
However, in a socio-cultural-cum fatalistic environment that has so many real and fallacious beliefs surrounding children, including the fact that God gives children and that children are not to be counted for some spiritual reasons, the global economic realities should nudge governments to actively work towards educating the populace about family planning in ways that would not, in a multi-religious environment like ours, spark off conflicts. The government must begin to consult the necessary institutions, religious and cultural, to find the best way to educate the citizens.
We equally believe that illiteracy and child marriage contribute to the population growth. Campaigns should start to enlighten the illiterate population about the dangers of breeding children neither they nor the country can cater for. Child-marriages make it possible for girls to start child bearing too early. Education often delays pregnancies and equally enlightens the woman on the values of healthy lifestyle and the need for planned families.
Governments might not stop anyone from having children but some social welfare for families with a certain number of children can help as incentives for planned parenting. Former military President, Ibrahim Babangida, had introduced the four children per family policy in the late 1980s but sadly, this was not pushed forward decisively and no government after him has considered population explosion serious enough to address it. We believe the growing economic realities and the poverty and insecurity in the nation are by-products of a country that has neglected the real problems that come with overpopulation. Now is the time to act for a better country with decisive population checking plans.
