Background: Nigeria is the country with the highest population in Africa. It is the seventh most populous country in the world. The growth per year is 3.2 percent, and the total fertility rate is five children per woman. Family planning allows spacing of pregnancies and delays in young women at increased risk of health problems and death from early childbearing. It prevents unintended pregnancies, including those of older women who face increased risks related to pregnancy. Family planning enables women who wish to limit the size of their families to do so. Evidence suggests that women who have given birth to more than four children are at increased risk of maternal mortality and can benefit from family planning services. Therefore, it is imperative to examine the attitude of midwives towards Nigerian Population Policy and Family planning as family planning remains among the veritable ways of maintaining optimum population and preventing maternal complications and death anywhere in the world, including in Nigeria. Hence, the current study in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area.

Aim:  The study's objective was to investigate midwives' attitudes toward Nigeria's population policy and family planning in primary healthcare settings. Specifically, the study seeks to find out the factors influencing the attitude of midwives towards Nigerian Population policy and Family Planning and determine the knowledge of family planning among midwives.

Methods: This study was guided by four research questions and two hypotheses and adopted the descriptive survey design. The population included 175 midwives working in the primary healthcare setting of Obio/Akpor local government area, out of which a sample of 138 was selected using the purposive sampling technique. A self-structured questionnaire titled ‘’ Midwives Attitude Towards the Nigerian Population Policy Questionnaire (MATNPPQ)’’ was used as the data collection instrument. The instrument was face and content validated by a combination of nursing and measurement & evaluation experts, and Cronbach Alpha regression determined its reliability with a reliability index of 0.82 using the test-retest approach. Data collection was done by the direct delivery and retrieval method. Ethical approval was obtained from the University of Port-Harcourt ethics and research committee.

Findings: Results from the study revealed that most of the midwives had a negative attitude toward Nigerian population policy. The grand mean of 3.15 for the items indicates that respondents agreed that midwives have positive attitudes toward Nigerian population policy. This implies that the majority of midwives perceived the population policy as of little relevance.

Conclusion: The study concluded that the majority of the midwives had a positive attitude toward family planning and a negative attitude towards Nigerian Population Policy.

Based on the findings, it was recommended that government should carry midwives along on policy issues such as the Nigerian population policy to enable them to be formidable change agents since they are frontline health workers.