CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1      BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
With a growing population tipping towards 200 million people in 2015, experts are beginning to express fears about the capacity of Nigeria in managing such population amid poverty and burden of healthcare. This has prompted the federal government to subtly suggest birth control for its citizen with serious backlash and dichotomy between proponents and opponents. In the quest to stem the tide of unbridled population growth, the government of the federal republic of Nigeria in 2002 came out with a population policy paper on family planning and fertility regulation.
According to the policy paper, the value of family planning and the child spacing on the stability and wellbeing of family shall be promoted and family service shall be incorporated in maternal and child health care. This is to help reduce maternal and infant morbidity and mortality as well as reduce rapid population growth in the shortest possible time in order to ensure sustainable development which can be achieved only by reducing population growth to bring it to per with the available national resources.
This will invariably lead to the attainment of good quality life and high standard of living in the country. It is perhaps because of the foregoing world leader in 1974 accepted family planning as a human right of individuals and couples. Article 14(F) of the World Population Plan of Action states that: “all couples and individuals have the basic right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information, education and means to do so; the responsibility of couples and individuals in the exercise of the right takes into account the needs of their living and future children, and their responsibility towards the community”.
Though there is a growing interest with the intense efforts of the government to popularize the use of modern family planning methods by integrating it unto maternal and child health in Nigeria, it seems many people still do not apply planning methods.
Is population Nigeria’s biggest problem? Whatever answer that is likely to come out; fears are being expressed concerning Nigeria’s rising population. From a little number of 55 million people in the 1950s, before independence, Nigeria’s population grew astronomically to about 80 million in the 1990s. Today, that figure is pecked around 167 million people.
If the nation’s population is left to grow uncontrolled, the national resources will sooner or later be outstripped by increasing demand of the growing population. Aside the political undertone of population, a high population carries with it many burdens that may even over power the state in handling. An increased population for Nigeria will also over stretch services and infrastructure.
In all the challenges that come with high population density, poor healthcare remains the biggest headache. In the long run, it may lead to total collapsed of the social system. These are the fears being expressed by the government, prompting government officials to conceive the idea of family planning.  Observers believed that high population will ever remain an impediment to her development until something is done about it. In the 1990s, the Ibrahim Babangida military government even attempted compulsory family planning for Nigerians. A policy that was greeted by strong opposition and critisms.
Though there is a growing interest with the intense efforts of the government to popularize the use of modern family planning method by integrating it into maternal and child health in Nigeria, it seems many people still do not apply family planning methods. This is essence brings to mind the role mass media will play to make effective the issue of family planning in a country like Nigeria that the literacy level is not at optimal.
The influence and pervasiveness of the mass media can be found everywhere around us today, and they are everywhere respected. We must search long and hard to find a Nigerian who will say that information provided by the media is not generally good for him or her in one way or another. We can say with large measure of certainty that one of the primary assumptions held by most Nigerians is that the media and the information derived from them have influenced our thought, attitudes and behaviors.  
Thus, the mass media touch nearly every one of us every day, socially and culturally. The mass media can affect the way we think about issues around us and they can influence what we think about and the way we eat, talk, work, study and relax. This is the impact of mass media on the society.