Niger Delta
Dep Gov Tasks Women On Family Planning
The Deputy Governor, Rivers State and National Champion, Family Planning has charged women in the state to embrace family planning, saying that it would do both they and their family good as it would bring about success in their lives.
She gave the charge when the state Family Planning Advocacy Working Group, FPAWG, paid her an advocacy visit to mark this year’s World Contraception Day.
According to her, ‘’embrace family planning, it would do you good, it would do your family good. In everything about life you have to plan to succeed if you don’t plan, you don’t succeed. Contraceptives are safe, when you plan your family, you give them the best, you too, you’ll be happy, and you’ll be strong. My women embrace family planning it is the best for you’’.
Earlier, in her address, the spokesperson of FPAWG who spoke on behalf of the Chairman, FPAWG, Mrs Helen Odeja, thanked the Deputy Governor for granting the group audience and appealed that she used her good offices to lend support to FPAWG missions and to consistently provide family planning commodities to the last mile, supported with consumables.
The Rivers State Commissioner for Health, Professor Chike Princewill says only 19.6percent of married women currently make use of contraceptive.
Princewill, who made this known in a broadcast to mark this year’s World Contraception Day, last Saturday in Port Harcourt said the government was committed to providing women with quality information hampering family planning.
According to him, “In Rivers State, only 19.6percent of currently married women use with modern methods of contraception. This data shows that although some progress is being made, there is more work to be done. The Rivers State Government, through the ministry of Health and its parastatals are committed to providing women with access to quality information and services in their public facilities’’.
In a related matter, a study by the Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey shows that family planning contributes 44 per cent reduction of maternal and mortality.
According to the research , Rivers State presently has 889 deaths out of every 100,000 live births.
Worried about this narrative, Rivers State, in partnership with The Challenge Initiative, TCI has lamented that some cultural and religious barriers hinder the acceptance of family planning services in the state.
Representative of the Rivers State Family Planning Advocacy Working Group, RSFPAWG and Desk Officer, Family Planning, Rivers State Primary Health Care Management Board, RSPHCMB, Mrs. Theresa Timothy, noted that low level of male partner involvement, myths and misconceptions in family planning were some of the major issues that hinder women of reproductive age from accessing family planning.
By: Tonye Nria-Dappa
The Mayor of Housing, My-ACE China, has alerted the Governor of Rivers, Akwa Ibom, and Abia states to what he calls an emerging ‘Economic Triangle’ within their states.
Mr China, a real estate success strategist who has won numerous local and international awards, has thus drawn the attention of the governors of the concerned states to the emerging development and has urged them to intentionally accelerate the emergence of the economic triangle.
Speaking to newsmen in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State capital at the conclusion of his business trip to the state, Mr China, who is the managing director of the Housing and Construction Mayor Limited, said the envisaged economic corridor would compete favourably with the Lagos economic hub or even better.
He said: “Talking about ‘Economic Triangle’, the only place that can wrest economic power from Lagos is Akwa Ibom, Abia, and Rivers states axis or corridor. This corridor contains more than Lagos has, if they can be interconnected with smooth roads, ports, and if their blue potentials are unlocked. They will not only wrest power from Lagos but would be more lucrative.”
The investor who is behind the emerging Alesa Highlands Green Smart City in Eleme, near Port Harcourt, said the new ‘Economic Triangle’ has a bigger potential due to massive land assets with the corridor plus blue economy and the existing hydrocarbon industry.
Explaining, Mayor of Housing said Aba (Abia State) provides the biggest fabrication capacity in West Africa to supply goods to the Gulf of Guinea; Port Harcourt provides access to the Gulf of Guinea for off-taking Aba products, and the Uyo provides deep sea port at Ibaka and international airport facilities as well as forest reserves for massive agro-economy.
He said with sea ports in Rivers State and deep seaport in Akwa Ibom, and international airports in Rivers and Akwa Ibom, Aba can focus on adequate power supply and fabrication boom to supply a new booming market around the economic triangle.
By doing this, he said, jobs would spill out in huge quantities and more manufacturers would be drawn from all over Africa to boost the fast coming African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). He said Nigeria would thus have two major trade nodes in West Africa; Lagos and the PH/UYO/Aba triangle.
He said goods going to or coming from Chad, Niger, and the rest of Central Africa can head to the Lagos ports or to the Ibaka/PH ports zone in the new economic triangle.
He said with power supply made stable, good roads, excellent security system, and ease of doing business enthroned in the zone, the South-South and South East would become the biggest economic nerve in the near future.
Mayor of Housing called on governors of the three states to be intentional about the new corridor, put away political differences (if any), and create this corridor by agreeing on projects each state would execute with a short period of time so the states would be linked by good roads, communication, security, trade laws, concessions to investors, etc.
He remarked that northerners were already heading to the Onne Port in Rivers State to export goods, saying creating a commission to oversee the development of the ‘Economic Triangle’ would fast-track its emergence.
He observed that people of the three states are peaceful and usually preoccupied with zeal for economic prosperity, saying that if they are linked to such huge opportunities staring at them in the emerging economic triangle, they would totally shun violence and focus on prosperity.
Mr China insisted that the emerging economic triangle would form a big node not only into the Gulf of Guinea economic zone but into Africa because AfCFTA is about production, certification, market availability, and easy transport nodes by sea and air. He said the new economic triangle boasts of all the factors.
“They can only realise this by working together, through collaboration. One state cannot do it but a triangle of the three will create it through seamless interconnection, ports, industrial park, etc. The people will be the richest and internally generated revenue (IGR) will be the biggest in the country,” he said.
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