The Associate Director, Pathfinder International
Nigeria, Dr. Habeeb Salami has tasked the Nigerian media to make family
planning a political agenda for the forthcoming general elections in 2019,
reports NaijaAgroNet.
Welcoming participants to a three-day Pathfinder’s AFP SMART
Advocacy Workshop in Lagos recently urged media practitioners especially in the
health sector to ensure that family planning attains agenda status in the next
year elections.
“We should let health issues be among campaignable issues as
election time is around the corner against 2019,” he charged.
Dr. Salami who lead the Pathfinder’s team on behalf of the
Country Director, explained the importance of the workshop for media
practitioners, saying its to form a formidable media group that will do a
focused-advocacy on family planning.
According to him the overall aim is to achieve an increase
in the uptake in Contraceptive Prevalent Rate (CPR) rate by 74 per cent in
two-year time, that is, by 2020.
Opportunities, he said, are abound in the media to get
policy makers to do the needful, stressing that the current state of “our
health indices are too bad for us as a country.”
He also said that there have been calls on why another group
is being created because there are other advocacy groups, insisted that
“Pathfinder wanted a very focused and evidence-based advocacy.”
The workshop moderated by the Communications Officer at
Pathfinder International, Mrs. Somto Atuanya, alongside, Mrs Yemisi and Mrs
Edirin Aderemi, while other speakers at the event included Dr. Sidiat Okaga,
Dr. Folashade Oludare and Mr. Ayo Adebusoye among others.
Remmy Nweke/Chuks Egbune/ED, Ops
