By Zayamu Hassan
The Association for the Advancement of Family Planning (AAFP) has expressed concern over the inability of the Federal Government to fulfill the promise it made to release $4 million annually for the procurement of family planning commodities.
The Chairman AAFP Management Committee, Dr Ejike Orji who stated this, called for the prompt release of the funds so as to make the family planning commodities available to those who need them at the right time.
Dr Orji raised this concern while responding to questions from journalists during the commemoration of the 2021 World Population Day, in Abuja at the weekend.
The World Population Day is commemorated annually, in order to draw the attention of the general public, especially, policy makers to critical population issues and proffer solution with the hope that such issues or challenges will be addressed by those who are in position to do it.
He said: “The way out is that we must make sure women have the services that they deserve and need. As we speak, 20 per cent of our women are saying they need family planning services but they are not getting it. If we make it possible for them to get, imagine when you add 20 per cent to our 12 per cent, it will be 32 per cent.
“We have a lot of demand generation, let us make sure that the women get the services. One other thing is that most of our family planning purchases are still driven by donors. We are bringing counterpart on the table. Nigeria promised to put in 4 million dollars annually, we hardly bring it.
“In programming, no product, no service. If don’t have the product, there will be no service. So, the women will show up and there are no services.”
On its part, the United Nation Population Fund (UNFPA), has said that it is working closely with the federal government in the area of programming and the procurement of contraceptives to assist it manage its population.
Assistant Country Representatives of the UNFPA Nigeria, Osareti Adonri, said the agency is working with the programme of Nigeria to help the country to procure contraceptives, the cheapest anybody can get in the world.
“Again, apart from helping to procure, we also put money in what we call the basket fund where Nigeria and other development partners also put money to make sure that these contraceptives are procured as cheaply as possible and to make sure that it gets to the clinic where they are supposed to be used. That is one aspect of our work.
“We also talk about the issues of Gender Based Violence (GBV), we support data collection, analysis and use. We are supporting the National Population Commission for census, for instance.
“We also have the agenda of three zeros to make sure that there is zero tolerance to GBV, there is zero unmet needs for family planning and we want to make sure that we have zero maternal deaths. We don’t want to see any women dying on the process of giving birth anymore,” Adonri, said.
