Fashola, Oshiomhole say high population

Fashola, Oshiomhole say high population
hampers national devt
on october 23, 2013 at 8:40 am in news
By OLASUNKANMI AKONI, JOSEPHINE IGBINOVIA
& MONSUR OLOWOOPEJO
LAGOS — The Governors of Lagos and Edo states,
Babatunde Fashola and Adams Oshiomole
respectively, have identified the need to tackle
poverty by addressing Nigeria’s population growth.
The duo, who expressed concern over Nigeria’s
spiralling population, decried that it was taking a toll
on governance while also reducing quality of lives of
Nigerians.
Also as Nigerians and politicians anxiously await the
2015 general elections, Governor Babatunde
Fashola of Lagos State and his Edo State
counterpart, Adams Oshiomhole, yesterday,
advocated the need for a woman president in the
country, saying time has come for the country to be
ruled by women.
Oshiomhole, however, said that the current face-off
between the Academic Staff Union of Universities,
ASUU, and the Federal Government was a pointer to
the leadership challenge confronting the country.
The governors spoke, yesterday, in Lagos, at the
flag-off of the 12th annual national conference by
the Committee of Wives of Lagos State Officials,
COWLSO.
Fashola emphasised the need for women to begin to
make conscious efforts towards cutting down on
reproduction.
“You have both the yam and knife. We can only
have a real chance to solve the problem of poverty
if we slow down on our population.
“If two in three persons are already living in
poverty in our world, what chances exists for those
who are coming? Poverty should rather be reducing
to one in three!
“In 1970, London had a population of about 8.5
million people while Lagos had 1.4 million people.
Today, the city of London has dropped to 8.1 million
people while Lagos has grown to 21 million! Is our
land growing? Are our water resources
increasing? Those are the resources we need to
sustain life!”, Governor Fashola said at the
conference tagged ‘See Beyond Today: Enhance the
Quality of Life.’
Admitting that an input must occur before any
output, Governor Adams Oshiomole advised men in
the country to devise every possible strategy of
easing population reduction, even if it requires
medical intervention, adding, “we are about a
quarter of all the black people around the world, but
as men, let us be more concerned about the quality
of this number.”