Nigerian women bear average of six children — World Bank

The World Bank database has shown that Nigerian women give birth to an average of six children within their childbearing years.


According to the database, Nigeria’s fertility rate as of 2011 was six births per woman. It shows that the country has the seventh highest rate in the world.

Neighbouring Niger Republic has the highest rate of 7.6 birth per woman, followed by Mali; with 6.9 births per woman; and Somalia 6.8 births per woman.

Chad’s fertility rate was 6.5 births per woman; Burundi’s was 6.2 births per woman; while Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda tied at 6.1 births per woman.

The database, which has figures from 2008 to 2011, shows that for most countries, fertility rate has been on the decline, but for Nigeria, it remained the same through the four-year period.

According to World Bank website, the total fertility rate represents the number of children that will be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and bear children in accordance with current age-specific fertility rates.

Similarly, it puts Nigeria’s adolescent fertility rate, which is the number of births per 1,000 women ages 15-19, at 120.

This means that as of 2011, out of every 10 girls between the ages of 15 and 19 in Nigeria, there were at least 1.2 births.

African countries also had the highest rates.

Niger Republic had 206 births per 1, 000 women ages 15 to 19; Mali had 177, Angola, 175; Chad, 158; and Malawi, 147.

For Nigeria, there has been a gradual drop in the adolescent fertility rate, from 2008 to 2011.

In 2008, Nigeria adolescent birth rate was 123 births per 1, 000 women ages 15 to 19.

It dropped to 122 births in 2009; and to 121 births in 2010.

Speaking on the statistics, the Founder and Executive Director, Spaces for Change, Mrs. Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri, said it was not proper to give a uniform fertility rate for Nigerian women, considering the wide variation from one part of the country to another.

“My problem with these foreign reports is that they think Nigeria is a homogenous unit. Birth rates in the rural areas are not the same with the rates in the urban areas where women have access to contraceptives, and are too busy to give birth to as much as six children,” she said.

Ibezim-Ohaeri also noted that the number of children a woman gives birth to is likely to be higher in the North, where there is the practice of early marriage for girls, than in the South where on the average “women get married at age 30.”