A university don, Prof. Ganiyat Adesina-Utman, of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), has called on the Federal Government to design an appropriate population policy to address high population rate and its consequences
Adesina-Utman, a Professor of Economics, stated this at the 19th Inaugural Lecture of the university in Abuja with the topic: ”What Has Finance Got To Do With It”.
According to her, no nation talks about economic planning for sustainable development without facts and figures on its population, which requires financing.
” The debate on population and economic development always remains relevant, we evaluated a secondary data to examine Nigerian population policy of 2004 and the study reveals that the target of reducing the population growth rate to 2 per cent or less in 2015 was unmet.
“A reduction in total fertility rate to at least 0.6 children every five years was achieved during two periods of 2008 and 2010.
” On achieving universal basic education before 2015, Nigeria was unable to achieve sustainable UBE prior to 2015.
” It was also unable to achieve eliminating gap between boy and girl enrolments to secondary, tertiary and vocational and technical education and trainings.
”The study indicates that the gaps rather widened during the period,” she said.
The don also called for policy to ensure that child spacing programme is implemented to address high population growth rate as well as reduce infant, child and maternal mortality
