Nigeria has made little progress in development over the last ten years, a report by the United Nations released this week says.
Despite its great mineral wealth, Nigeria’s people die young, with little access to health services, or sanitation, according to the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development report.
“The infant mortality rate in Nigeria is roughly the same as it was in England in the 1890s -160 deaths for every 1000 live births,” the report says.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s former Finance Minister says that access to reliable water sources is a key cause of Nigeria’s poor performance in the Human Development Index.
In the report, she calls for more aid to Africa, including Nigeria, to help provide water supply for poor people.
Nigeria has the highest Gross Domestic Product of any nation in the “low development” bracket. The country made US $72.1 billion in 2004. This is greater than the GDPs of most countries judged to have “medium development”.
But Nigeria has performed badly in every other area. Gross Domestic Product per head of population is only US$ 560, a little over a dollar a day. This has barely changed in 30 years, the report says.
In Nigeria, there are only 28 doctors for every 100,000 people, the report reveals.
Less than half of the population has sustainable access to improved sanitation. In 2004, 44 per cent of people had reliable access to sanitary conditions.
The number of people with access to clean drinking water actually dropped two per cent to 48 over the last 14 years.
Life expectancy at birth is lower than the average for other countries rated as having “low” human development. In Nigeria the average is 43.4 years. The average for other “low development” countries is 58.7 years.
A 1990 survey revealed that in the poorest 20 per cent of the population, only 12 per cent of births were attended by skilled health professionals. Among the countries richest 20 per cent that figure was 70 per cent.
Population growth in Nigeria is placed at only two per cent, according to the UN figures. But urban areas have swelled by over 100 per cent to nearly half the population in just 14 years. By 2015, it is projected, over half of Nigerians will live in cities. This comes at a time when the percentage of people with access to clean water in the city is falling, down 15 per cent in fourteen years.
Mrs Okonjo-Iweala, in a letter jointly signed by Gordon Brown and published in the UNDP report said: “For school-age girls, the time spent travelling- sometimes hours-to the nearest source of water is time lost in education, denying them the opportunity to get work and to improve the health and living standards of their families and themselves. You cannot build effective education systems when children are constantly sick and absent from school. And you cannot achieve education for all when girls are kept at home because their parents are worried by the absence of separate toilet facilities.”
Although donors should be entitled to know their money will be well spent, Mrs Okonjo-Iweala said: “countries with low rates of development are entitled to expect good policies to be backed by a predictable flow of aid financing commensurate with the scale of the challenge.”
Under one per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), comes from aid, the report says.
The index is published every five years and is drawn up by researchers based on a range of indicators which make up a general picture of quality of life rather than straight economic indexes.