Overview

Nigeria’s National Population Policy (NPP) has been revised to take into account the objectives of the International Conference on Population and Development. However, progress has been hampered in recent years by severe budgetary constraints coupled with the still-limited capacity of the National and 36 State Planning Commissions to integrate population factors into development plans and to translate the NPP into an multisectoral programme framework that can be implemented.

Economic growth has not kept pace with rapid population growth, and as a consequence the proportion of the population living below the poverty line has increased from 46.3 per cent to 65.6 per cent. Adolescent sexual and reproductive health status is poor, due to such factors as early sexual initiation, a high level of unsafe sexual practices, low utilization of modern family planning methods, and lack of access to credible sources of information and services. Women continue to be disadvantaged in employment, access to credit, education, land ownership and participation in government. Their status is also undermined by gender violence, female genital cutting, poor nutrition for girls, and approximately 20,000 new cases of vesico-vaginal fistula (VVF) recorded annually.

On the positive side, the contraceptive prevalence rate, while still low, has tripled since 1990, and a national reproductive health policy has been adopted and implementation is well underway. Moreover, population policy data has improved since the 1999 Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys (NDHS). The sentinel baseline surveys have been disseminated, and monographs on Gender, Children, Adolescents and Youth have been published by the National Population Commission. A new NDHS also took place in 2004. The Government has recently committed itself to conducting a major Population and Housing Census in 2004.

Statistics and indicators >>>