Only 13% of women in Nigeria are using contraceptives

Contraceptive prevalence rate refers to the percentage of women who are practicing, or whose sexual partners are practicing, at least one modern method of contraception. This is usually measured for women ages 15-49 who are married or in a union.

Female and male sterilization, oral hormonal pills, the intra-uterine device (IUD), the male condom, injectables, the implant (including Norplant), vaginal barrier methods, the female condom and emergency contraception, make up modern methods of contraception.

But with only 13 percent of women using contraceptives, there are more problems for Nigerians to worry about. The rate of the use of contraceptives by women in Nigeria was contained in report by World Bank. In the report, further shared by The Spectator Index, Nigeria is lowest among the countries indexed.

This means that, women who want to space their kids, who are not ready for children and are sexually active but do not have access to contraceptives, would continue giving birth to kids they do not  have the financial capacity to take care of said Elizabeth Williams, a sexual and reproductive health expert.

She explained to Women’s Hub that there would also be an increase in unsafe abortions because, if young girls who are sexually active do not have access to contraceptives, then they would opt for abortions which is unsafe and could lead to many complications which could also lead to the death of the girl.

Read also: Women and Oral Contraceptives

“It would also lead to an increase in maternal mortality meaning that we would have women who would be dying from birth-related issues because if a woman is not fully recovered from her previous delivery, and immediately takes in and has to give birth again, her chances of her surviving or the baby surviving reduces because she hasn’t had time to recover,” she further explained.

But, apart from this, poor access to contraceptives leads to a population overshoot. Williams said when there is a population overshoot, “we have more people that the society cannot take care of, we have a large population of dependence, rather than a large population of independence.”

“This means that society will always keep providing for these people, they will always be taking from the economy and not be giving back to the economy, and by doing that, we wouldn’t be able to achieve demographic dividends which is dividends accrued to a society or a country when their independence population is higher than their dependent population,” she told Women’s Hub.

She added that Nigeria currently has a high rate of unmet needs for contraceptives. Unmet need for contraception is the percentage of fertile, married women of reproductive age who do not want to become pregnant and are not using contraception. The percentage was reported at 23.06 percent in 2018, according to the World Bank.

“We have a high number of women who need or want contraceptives but they don’t have access, and that is the why the number of women using is low,” she said.

Cementing Williams argument on lack of access to contraceptives resulting in a population overshoot, UNICEF recently announced the birth of 26, 039 babies born on the first day of the new decade.

These new-born Nigerians will account for almost 7 percent of the estimated 392,078 babies to be born on New Year’s Day globally – the third highest number of babies in the world, after India and China.

That is also another 26, 039 babies added to the current population of the country.