Family planning as survival strategy during economic distress
That the Nigerian economy is in a shambles is an understatement. The rising cost of living, high unemployment rate, astronomic poverty index, low life expectancy, high child mortality are all testimonies to this fact. Every development index is pointing south for Nigeria. We are not on the way to achieving any of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations. Even none of the eight Millennium Development Goals that preceded the SDGs was achieved.
Ahead of every election, thousands of contestants across all the political offices being vied for, promise El-Dorado for the electorate. They come up with one agenda or the other. One even promised ‘Change’, the incumbent president promised ‘Renewed Hope’ with an eight-point agenda. For over 100 years of our electoral democracy which started in 1923, every election follows the same pattern of ‘promise and fail.’ According to former Governor of New York State in America, Mario Cuomo, politicians “campaign in poetry, govern in prose.”
Any wonder people decide to vote with their feet rather than their thumbs at elections? They simply don’t turn out to vote because they are disenchanted and dissatisfied with the performances of our elected political leaders. That’s why voter turnout at the polls is about 30 per cent on average. Look at the state of infrastructure in Nigeria. Thousands of capital projects are abandoned after spending trillions of naira on them. Indeed, we are very wasteful in this country. The roads across the country, be they federal, state or local government-controlled, are in terrible shape. Many of them are death traps because of the potholes on them. In many portions of the road, the asphalt overlay has been washed away by rain.
What about our hospitals? Many of them, be it teaching hospitals, general hospitals or primary health centres, are mere consulting clinics. In fact, most people, particularly in rural communities, have more faith in prayer homes and herbal centres than in our health facilities. There are rampant cases of medical negligence, lack of professionalism, obsolete equipment and inadequate medical personnel to attend to patients. Many of our health practitioners are leaving Nigeria in droves for saner climes with equipment and incentives for medical staff. Our educational institutions from primary to tertiary level are not faring any better than our hospitals. Most public schools are dilapidated and sparsely equipped. Teachers are routinely embarking on industrial actions. Just last Monday, August 19, 2024, the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities issued another 21 days’ notice of strike to the Federal Government over the non-implementation of previously signed agreements.
Of greater concern is the soaring insecurity across the country. Bandits, insurgents, kidnappers are having a field day, running rings around our security agents. In times past, it used to be the wealthy that were targeted by criminal elements. In contemporary times no one is spared. Both the haves and the have-nots are now victims. Imagine peasant farmers being killed and maimed or abducted from their farms. Travelling by road in Nigeria is gradually becoming a suicide mission that has to be embarked on with prayers and fasting for safe trips. Nigerians are now voluntary prisoners in their homes afraid of venturing out when there is no curfew and putting up layers of fortifications around their homes in order to stave off criminals.
The irony is that successive administration including the current one prefers personal aggrandisement to bettering the lives of ordinary citizens. They wallow in obscene luxurious lifestyles while the majority of the citizens go hungry. Billions of naira are budgeted for the welfare of less than 10 per cent of the elected political office holders while tokens are offered to ordinary citizens as palliatives. In the midst of agonising hunger and starvation, the presidency a couple of days back unveiled a brand new private jet for the travelling pleasure of our president. Nigerians are not informed of the cost of this ‘mobile palace.’
Truth be told, the harsh economic conditions did not start with the incumbent president. Many a time when people talk about the good old days, I chuckle. I was born in the 60s and I can confidently say that phrase is a mirage. From the 50s through to the 90s many students dropped out of school because their parents couldn’t pay their school fees which may look like a small fraction of what is being paid as tuition today. In Ibadan, it took the generosity of a wealthy business tycoon called Adebisi Idi-Ikan to pay the taxes of the Ibadan people who could not pay their taxes. For decades, my father was a primary school teacher in Ibadan having a family of seven yet we were perpetually hungry and starving because his paltry salary could not give us decent meals and accommodation. Indeed, the government of Chief Bola Ige as governor of Oyo State severally owed teachers and civil servants salary arrears.
Could you believe that artistes like Chief Hubert Ogunde, Apala maestro, Ayinla Omowura, Fuji exponents, Sikiru Ayinde Barrister and Gen. Kollington Ayinla, Juju icon, Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey and King Sunny Ade all composed songs and waxed albums to draw the attention of the government to the high cost of living of Nigerians? These all happened in the proverbial “good old days”!
I would say that people should stop looking entirely to the government for their salvation and solutions to their myriad needs. Doing so will leave them in perpetual misery. The iron law of oligarchy and elite theory in Political Science has taught us that the powerful ruling class are more interested in class survival and will work assiduously to protect their selfish interest. It is up to ordinary citizens to fashion out their individual survival strategies. To my mind, one of such is to embrace family planning. China at some point has a one-child per family policy.
According to the Britannica online dictionary, “one-child policy, official programme initiated in the late 1970s and early ’80s by the central government of China, the purpose of which was to limit the great majority of family units in the country to one child each. The rationale for implementing the policy was to reduce the growth rate of China’s enormous population. It was announced in late 2015 that the programme was to end in early 2016.”
I know the Nigerian government will not have it as a policy like China did because of the socio-cultural and religious sentiments prevalent in the country. However, individual family must have to embrace birth control, child spacing and family planning as a way to cut down extensively on their family running cost. Rather than dissuading their adherents, religious leaders must help sensitise parents to limit childbearing to the barest minimum they can train without sweat. Gone are the days of self-deceit that the God that created the mouth will provide what to feed it with. Were it to be so, nobody would be hungry in the world.
Yoruba has a proverb that “ti enu ba bu akara koja oun to gba, yio pokolo” meaning if the mouth bites more than it can chew, it will choke. Another Yoruba proverb says, “Omo beere, osi beere” meaning plenty children, plenty miseries. It is better to have a manageable number of children than to have children that you can’t cater to their needs and who may end up becoming deviants and threats to societal peace.
- X:@jideojong
