TCI’s Mobilisation Drive Spurs Surge in Family Planning Uptake Across Borno
The Challenge Initiative (TCI) on Wednesday expressed happiness with how its efforts through social mobilisation have significantly increased the demand for and access to quality family planning services in Borno since 2023.
Dr Yusuf Ahmadu, the TCI State Programme Manager, made this known during the DEVCOM Borno State family planning media roundtable meeting in Maiduguri.
Ahmadu said that the TCI had, between January 2023 and March 2025, recorded
11,363 social mobilisation activities and reach out to 239,641 people in eight Local Government Areas (LGAs).
The TCI state programme manager said of the figure, 129,614 persons were successfully referred to family planning services within the period under review.
He pointed out that the TCI had done well in the area of social mobilisation in the state, currently supporting the state in 25 facilities to ensure every childbearing-age woman has access to quality family planning services.
Ahmadu said that a total of 82,234 persons, representing 67 percent of childbearing age reached through social mobilisation messages.
completed their referral services in the facilities.
The TCI state programme manager said that more than half of the 1,761,458 women of childbearing age currently in the state had subscribed for family planning.
Also speaking, Habiba Saidu, state coordinator and representative for maternal, newborn, child, adolescent, and elderly health plus nutrition (RMNCAEH+N) at the state Primary Healthcare Development Board, urged the state government to increase its budgetary allocation on family planning services.
Saidu, however, called on the residents to embrace family planning, as it were, noting that childbirth spacing has a lot of advantages, especially in the management of maternal mortality, among others.
She also urged the state government to make family planning commodities available in all service delivery facilities across the state.
The state coordinator further encouraged the government to increase family planning facilities, which she said could propel the coverage of childbirth spacing in the state.
Saidu also called on the state government to train additional service providers in the area of childbirth spacing so as to address the shortage of manpower in that direction.
