By Justina Asishana, The Nation & ASHENEWS

The media is one group of the society that plays a key role in advocacy, education, and information of the public. This group, though very important in the society is sometimes looked upon as an appendage rather than a components of projects both at public and private levels.

At the ongoing 8th Nigeria Family Planning Conference, the International Conference on Family Planning 2025 held a side event on Community Conversations to advance the discourse on family planning and sexual and reproductive health and rights and served as a platform for Nigeria stakeholders to contribute insights and shape the agenda for ICFP 2025.

The International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) has consistently served as a global platform for advancing discourse on family planning (FP) and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). The two-hour side event held on December 3, 2024 brought together leaders representing multiple sectors of the ICFP community which include scientific research and measurement, advocacy and accountability, youth, faith, demographic dividend, private sector, program implementation, humanitarian and crisis settings, power shifting, environment and climate change, and communications.

The family planning stakeholders had discussions that will bring Nigerian perspectives within the global FP ecosystem to the fore, identify areas of highest importance to the country, and shine a light on the country’s biggest family planning successes to share on the global stage moving into and through the ICFP in Bogota, Colombia which would hold from 3-6 November 2025. This forum aims to uncover programmatic insights, challenges, and opportunities while aligning local priorities with global strategies for ICFP 2025.

One of the conversations was around “Communications". This conversation gathered journalists, On-Air-Personalities, Social Media Managers, Information Managers, and the academia.

Though it was recorded that there have been some successes in using effective communication to advance family planning goals, there are still challenges that need to be addressed in order to ensure successful enhancement of the dissemination of family planning messages. Some of the key successes include using digital tools and social media to reach diverse especially the younger audiences and the use of local languages to reach audiences in the rural areas.

There were also concerns by professional journalists on how they are not being carried along when stakeholders have projects and programmes but just called upon to cover the flag-off or the end of such programme or project. They described being seen as appendages and not components that can push the family planning messages to ensure more awareness and understanding.

“Journalists are part of the public and if they are not convinced about your project, they just write what they understand which would not be enough to convince the public. Until journalists and people in the media are seen as partners and components, advocacy and sensitization for family planning would not be effectively implemented in the state.”

“That is why the media need to be one of the major stakeholders when implementing your messages, they should be included from the beginning to the end of a project so that when they understand the project they can be able to educate and inform the public adequately. When the media buy into the idea and project because they understand it, the public will benefit immensely”, Chinyerugo Chinwuba of Armed Forces Radio said.

Effective communication is essential to advancing family planning goals which is the reason why the participants during the conversation agreed that several people in the rural areas do not have access to social media, so it is important to deliver family planning messages based on the particularities of the area the message is to be disseminated.

Safiya Yaman of Prestige Radio suggested the need for singing the local dialects of the people who are in the rural areas and since Nigeria is a country with many languages, it is key for the family planning advocate and information managers to understand the terrain they are going for locality and get someone who will be able to communicate in the local dialects to the people in order to ensure effective understanding of the messages that would be communicated.

Yaman also suggested using towncriers, community leaders, and folktales to pass messages of family planning to the people in the rural areas.

There was also discussion around the use of videos, pictures, trends, infographics and use of influencers to reach out to the group of people who are digital savvy.

It was agreed that if these issues are addressed, there would be no challenge in effective advocacy and understanding of family planning messages in the rural area and it would fast-track the FP2030 goal in Nigeria.

Stay tuned for more community-driven, community-inspired reporting from the 8th Nigerian Family Planning Conference, taking place December 3–6, 2024.