Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 3:27:00 AM EDT
(the following is from Abdulrahman, one of our youth activists in Nigeria)
The international Youth day is here again, a day set aside to commemorate and celebrate young people all over the world. In its ninth year, it’s a special day set aside to address the issues and needs of young people. The theme for this year, “Sustainability, Our Challenges, Our Future”, couldn’t have come at a better in our history. This is the time to take a closer look at the several challenges that has truncated our growth especially when our future as a nation depends on it.
The Nigerian youth have been bewildered with a lot of developmental issues in recent times. Although Youth/adolescents are generally considered physically healthy, they are vulnerable to several unique health problems, such as early child bearing and unwanted pregnancies, with its consequences. Others include higher maternal and child mortality, unsafe abortion; sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS; and sexual exploitation and abuse. According to the 2003 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), more than25% of teenage women in Nigeria have begun child bearing, 30% of rural women aged 15-19 compared with 17% of urban women. A survey conducted in 2006 also showed that young people contributes 55% of the 760,000 unsafe abortion taking place annually in Nigeria.
The lack of accurate information and limited access to adolescent-friendly health services are major contributory factors to the poor reproductive health status of young people in Nigeria. The Nigerian youth lack the basic tools for development and growth. The education and health sector, which is a vital part of the development, is not living up to expectations because funding has been grossly inadequate and has never met up to the United Nations agreement. Just recently, money from the education and health budgetary allocation in the FCT were removed to build roads. This is highly unacceptable! Building roads might be a necessity but it is not justifiable to remove money from a critical sector like that considering the state of these sectors.
The challenges are limitless in several countries on the African continent. International agencies like the EU, USAID, DFID, and PACKARD are in several countries within the African continent with funding for different program interventions to mitigate against these various developmental challenges. It is true that these interventions are ongoing but the entire funding is also time bound and minute. It is said that the entire funds from all the foreign agencies is about 1% of the Nigerian GDP. The question is: what is our commitment as a government? Sustainable growth and development requires sustained commitment and funding of interventions. It is not enough to provide an enabling environment but for government to commit herself to allocate funding in the sector's budgetary allocations and see to its implementation. It is true that government with various stakeholders in Nigerian has worked to revise the National Policy on Health and Development of Adolescent and Young People, and a commensurate strategic framework which has not been costed. Various projects for intervention are starting and a lot has come to an end as a result of inadequate funding from sponsors. It is true we have several challenges facing adolescents and youth as concerns sexual and reproductive health, and also true that there several intervention ongoing, but the truth is there has been very minimal funding for these purpose. If we must sustain the developmental progress we want to make, government must commit herself to make funding available in the budget for adolescent sexual and reproductive health especially in the Health sector budget and other line ministries like Education, Youth and Women affairs in Nigeria.
The Youth Advocate Group (YAG) believes this change is necessary and very important to sustain the future we so desire. Our objective as a group is the provision of a national budgetary allocation for ASRH policy implementation and increased opportunities for young people to participate in the implementation of the ASRH policies and programs. It is no gainsaying that there is for a massive investment in sexual and reproductive health programs for young people and adolescents. Although several international partners and foundations have recorded significant achievements, it is time for the Nigerian government and the private sector to make more contributions. For a sustainable response, the government needs to facilitate the implementation of the extensive policies developed by providing funding for adolescent reproductive health programs at the federal, state, and local government level. Furthermore, young people’s representation must be institutionalized in all decision making entities at all levels. The time to invest is now!!!
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