Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has called on all Nigerians to give birth to only children they can cater for.
Sanusi made this call at the opening of the 108th edition of Islamic Vocation Course (IVC) organized by the Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria (MSSN) Zone B.
READ ALSO: Uproar as DSS officer shoots man dead while targeting runaway Christmas cow
He urged the male Muslim faithfuls to only marry the number of women they can take care of as there is need to educate every child especially the out-of-school children.
According to him, “If we continued this way, about 40 per cent extremely poor people will be in Nigeria. Poverty in the South West is 20 percent, in the North, it is 80 percent, Lagos is 8 per cent and Zamfara, it is 91 per cent.
“We have been talking about Almajiri for over 30 years. Why are people having families they cannot maintain? Why are people marrying wives that they cannot maintain? The condition is that you are able to provide for your family.
“Instead of having many children, why not have the ones you can cater for? These are the fundamental questions we should ask ourselves. Most of these children roaming about the streets will be adult in the next twenty years and they will be the ones recruited as political thugs by the politicians in the next twenty years, if we don’t take good care of them now. This is my own advice that we must look at. These are not religious issues, they are social issues that need to be addressed.”
Earlier, The Herald reported that Sanusi said over population is one of the biggest challenges Nigeria is currently faced with, and it is one if the biggest threat it may encounter in future if not controlled.
Sanusi, while relaying his father’s experience in china, which portrayed the extreme poverty of the country and how it came out of it said;
“In 1972, my father went to Beijing as Nigeria’s first ambassador to China, in 1972, my father had to seek permission from the foreign ministry to go to Honk Kong every two weeks because essential commodities were not available in Beijing.