Nigeria mulls birth control policy

Nigeria’s finance minister says the government is mulling a plan to limit the number of children a woman can have.
Zainab Ahmed made the comment at a summit focusing on Nigeria’s economy in the capital, Abuja.
She said one the challenges Nigeria faced to meet economic growth targets set by the government was the country’s burgeoning population.
The government was consulting religious and traditional leaders nationwide about the policy, Ms 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 [Economic Recovery Growth Plan], which is the growth in our population, we need to engage these institutions,” Nigeria’s Punch newspaper quoted her as saying.
“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.”
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation with an estimated population of 186 million.