Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), has revealed the intention of the organisation to introduce a “husbands’ school” in Nigeria.
Osotimehin made this known during an interactive session with reporters in Abuja on Wednesday.
Expressing optimism that the initiative will boost access to family planning and other reproductive health services, Osotimehin said the agency will work with the federal government to look at human development through the intervention of family planning.
“I am talking about human development in the broad sense, because most people restrict family planning to the context of saving the mother’s life,” he said.
“Saving the mother’s life component of family planning is also important, but family planning goes far beyond saving mother’s life.
“UNFPA will work with government to ensure that we raise this considerably and make sure Nigerians understand the centrality of family planning as a human development intervention.”
He said the concept of the husbands’ school, which started in Niger Republic, is now being replicated in many parts of Africa.
He explained that a mentor would talk to the men over certain period of time, and talk more about the welfare of women and adolescent girls.
“We have observed that when women started going to antenatal clinics, they have safe deliveries at centres; we also found that child survival also increase.
“We also found that many women take their children to hospitals and centres where they get proper advice on immunisation, malaria infections, diarrhoea diseases and other child survival interventions.
“Our indicators show significant increase in uptake of family planning services.”
Osotimehin said the men were happy because they realised that the lecture they received had led to reduction of infant and maternal mortality.
He reiterated the commitment of the agency to engage men and boys to ensure that they understand their role in terms of the welfare and dignity of women girls.
He said one of the challenges before Nigeria and Africans was how to utilise “our young people to achieve demographic dividends”.
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