A consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist with the University of Jos Teaching Hospital, Josiah Mutihir, has said that Nigeria’s fertility rate is too high and must be checked.

“Women in Nigeria have an average of 5.3 children per woman. This is high compared to other countries whose total fertility rate is 2.3 children per woman,” Mr Mutihir said on Tuesday in Jos.

He said that there was a “population explosion threat in Nigeria,” and emphasised the need for family planning, adding that Nigeria currently ranks the seventh country with the highest population in the world.

“By 2050, Nigeria may be ranked third in terms of countries with the highest population in the world,” he said.

Mr Mutihir opined that Nigeria would not develop if it failed to use family planning to control the growing population.

“We are saying that we should control and not destroy. We should allow our population to grow as our resources become available.

“Family planning never reduces population; it just controls the growth rate of a country,” he pointed out.

According to him, family planning benefits not only parents and their children, but the society and nation at large as it can keep the number of new births under control for less population growth.

The consultant stated that the high fertility rate stretches the country’s available resources, which in turn affects the economic growth of the country.

He said that family planning helps people have the desired number of children, which improves the health of the mother and contributes to the nation’s social and economic development.

The consultant observed that Nigeria’s population was not growing in line with the available resources and blamed the situation for the rise in social ills in the country.

He explained that family planning had demographic dividends as the population grows steadily in line with the resources available for the growth of a country.

“Family planning has been known to be directly related to the developmental growth of every nation,” he declared.