Despite the progress made in recent times by Nigeria and many other countries in reducing child and maternal deaths, a newly released Countdown to 2015 Decade Report (2000 to 2010) says lack of skilled attendants at birth accounts for two million preventable maternal deaths, stillbirths and newborn deaths each year.
The report listed Nigeria as one of the 10 countries, which may not meet Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5. The situation is expected to have been the reverse with the launch of the Midwives Service Scheme (MSS) last year by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA). The MSS is expected to ensure the availability of skilled birth care in Primary Health Centres (PHCs) across the country and reverse the poor maternal, newborn and child health outcomes in Nigeria.
The midwives were to offer ante natal, natal and post-natal services. They were given refresher training courses as well as additional skills in the management of common childhood illness. The MSS is touted as a significant step in the national efforts towards improving skilled attendance at delivery and indeed accelerating progress in the attainment of MDGs 4 and 5.
In spite of the MSS government initiative, Countdown 2015 Decade Report count Nigeria one of the 10 countries that showed decrease in the use of skilled birth attendance.
Source: Global Child Mortality Rate Hits Two Million Mark
By Chukuwma Muanya
The Guardian, Wednesday June 9, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
The Overt Act
The Nigerian society is a patriarchal society where the male dominates. In the Nigerian society is a hierarchy in which men’s activities and attributes that are more highly valued such that men are given a greater leverage over decision making and resources than women. This is more so even when the women are more hardworking. The sharp contrast between the experiences of widows and widowers in Nigeria vividly illustrates this phenomenon. Widowers in most cultures in Nigeria rarely go through obnoxious widowhood practices like their female counterparts. They are not put in confinements like the widows. In fact some widowers are given women to sleep with on the day their deceased wife is buried in order not to feel lonely.
What is most striking and surprising about these cultures is that it is mostly enforced by women against their female folks. I have heard cases in which when women lost their husbands, it is their female in laws that spear head the fight against the widow in the name of tradition. They feel when the deceased man was alive, it was the widow that did not allow the man to extend his generous hands to them as much as they had wanted. Now that the man is dead, field is free to revenge on the widow. In extreme cases, they accuse the widow of being responsible for the death of her husband even where the man died of a disease he contacted before meeting the woman.
Deji of Akure’s olori provoked the Oba and his aide’s voyage to his estranged wife’s family’s house to dehumanized the woman forgetting that it is the cane used on the first wife that is kept for the junior wife.
I wonder what on earth the estranged wife could have done to have warrant such a bastardly act from the Oba who forgot momentarily his sacred position in the community.
I think we, women inspite of the innate power of persuasion God has bestowed on us over men, should work on our emotions and fantasies. Women networks should not only include women from all social strata but men as well. The man needs to know that it is not all yellings from a woman that requires an overly act.
Oba Oluwadare Adepoju Adesina’s action is almost causing him his throne. What legacy is the monarch leaving behind for his generations to come? What a shame!
What is most striking and surprising about these cultures is that it is mostly enforced by women against their female folks. I have heard cases in which when women lost their husbands, it is their female in laws that spear head the fight against the widow in the name of tradition. They feel when the deceased man was alive, it was the widow that did not allow the man to extend his generous hands to them as much as they had wanted. Now that the man is dead, field is free to revenge on the widow. In extreme cases, they accuse the widow of being responsible for the death of her husband even where the man died of a disease he contacted before meeting the woman.
Deji of Akure’s olori provoked the Oba and his aide’s voyage to his estranged wife’s family’s house to dehumanized the woman forgetting that it is the cane used on the first wife that is kept for the junior wife.
I wonder what on earth the estranged wife could have done to have warrant such a bastardly act from the Oba who forgot momentarily his sacred position in the community.
I think we, women inspite of the innate power of persuasion God has bestowed on us over men, should work on our emotions and fantasies. Women networks should not only include women from all social strata but men as well. The man needs to know that it is not all yellings from a woman that requires an overly act.
Oba Oluwadare Adepoju Adesina’s action is almost causing him his throne. What legacy is the monarch leaving behind for his generations to come? What a shame!
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