The Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, on Wednesday, denied that the Federal Government was going to put a cap on the number of children that a woman could have.
On her Twitter handle, @ZShamsuna, Ahmed said, the government only has plans to encourage traditional and religious leaders to talk to their members about child spacing.
Her tweet read, “The federal government has been engaging critical stakeholders like traditional and religious leaders to advise their members on child spacing. We never said we are placing a cap on childbirth. What is child spacing? This is a healthy practice of waiting between pregnancies.”
Ahmed at the 24th Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja, on Tuesday, said that the Federal Government was working hard to come out with a policy that would limit the number of children that a mother could have in Nigeria.
Ahmed said, “We have been engaging traditional rulers and other leaders. Specifically, we have found out that to be able to address one of the great challenges that we identified in the ERGP, which is the growth in our population, we need to engage these institutions.
“And we hope that with their support, we will get to a point where we can come out with the policy that limits the number of children that a mother can have because that is important for sustaining our growth.”
When asked about the sustainability of the ERGP by successive governments, Ahmed argued that the plan would be sustained as it was purely a document that focused on the development of the Nigerian economy.
