Background: Significant proportion of maternal
deaths in Nigeria is due to complications of unsafe
abortions, and these abortions are responses to
unwanted pregnancies that could have been prevented
by effective contraceptive programming. Despite
intense programmatic efforts by the Nigerian
government and various non-governmental agencies to
reverse the trend, there has been little evidence to
suggest a systematic improvement in these indicators.
Methodology: A household random survey of 1,528
women aged between 15-49 years was undertaken at
Amukpe community in Nigeria, to determine their
knowledge, practice and perceptions of contraception.
Results: The results showed that 86.2% of the
respondents had secondary or less level of education
and 19.2% of the respondents were single parents. The
level of contraceptive awareness was high (92.3%) and
88% of the respondents became aware of contraception
in the last 14 years. Friends/relatives (40.6%), followed
by nurses (31.7%) and then doctors (17.3%) were the
common sources of contraceptive awareness. The most
widely known contraceptive methods were injectables,
condoms, POP and OCP. The specific knowledge of
emergency contraception was poor. The factors associated
with low contraceptive usage were poor level of
training and ineffective conveyance of relevant information
to clients by health personnel, low literacy levels,
extremes of reproductive age and extremes of parity.
Others were fear of side effects, lack of knowledge,
and lack of spousal consent.
Conclusion: Contraceptive usage remain poor despite
high level of awareness. Effective educational and
counseling interventions are likely to improve providers’
and consumers’ knowledge and subsequent uptake
of contraceptive usage.