Fertility rate drops among women in Nigeria as population rises

Fertility rate among Nigerian women has dropped to about 5.3 from the 6.4 recorded 6.4 recorded in 1969, latest report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) have shown.

The report by the UNFPA noted that Nigeria’s growth rate has been at an average of 2.6 percent from 2010 to 2019 with the fertility rate among Nigerian women dropping from 6.4 in 1969 to 5.3 in 2019.

That means an average Nigerian woman gives birth to at least five children while Global fertility rate, or the average number of births per woman stood at 4.8 in 1969; 2.9 in 1994; and 2.5 in 2019.

According to the report, contraceptive prevalence rate among Nigerian women aged 15-49 is only 19 percent, adding that decision making on sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights among these women has averaged at 51 percent between 2007 and 2018.

What this entails is that 49 percent of Nigerian women still do not have the power to decide on their sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights.

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Also in the report, Nigeria’s population has hit a new high of 201 million, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says in its 2019 state of the world population report published on its website.

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The UN agency estimated that Nigeria’s population has grown from 54.7 million in 1969 to 105.4 million in 1994 and 201.0 million in 2019.

Of this 201 million, 44 percent or 88.44 million are between the ages of 0 and 14, while 32 percent, 64.32 are within the ages of 10 and 24.

The reports revealed that “reproductive rights are still out of reach for too many women, including the more than 200 million women who want to prevent a pregnancy but cannot access modern contraceptive information and services”.

“Ultimately, almost all of the 4.3 billion people of reproductive age around the world today will have had inadequate access to sexual and reproductive health services at some point.