Poor Rating Continues

The2007/08 United Nations Development Programme, UNDP’s, Human Development Index, HDI, ratings of 177 countries of the world had been released. Expectedly, the country notched the ladder by a negligible step at number 158 compared to last year’s 159th position.


The nation struggled at the bottom of the list with countries like Central African Republic, CAR, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger Republic, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique and Sierra Leone. The best placed African country, Mauritius, occupies the 65th position. Of these countries, none has vast resources of Nigeria, yet mismanagement and poor leadership focus has placed Nigeria in the same class with countries that command less than the resources available to some of our 774 local government areas.

The HDI report has been condemned because it was done by a foreign body but were the statistics used foreign? Parameters like poverty level, unemployment rate, school enrolment, women and children health and mortality ratio based for the studies as they obtained in the various countries.
Nigeria should present contrary statistics to disprove the way HDI rating portrayed it. We do not think there is any. If the government is sincere, it would not need the HDI to know how badly Nigerians live. Rather, the rating sufficiently captures the reality.

Instead of apportioning blames, the government should come out genuinely to address the exposed inadequacies in our general well being.


No excuse is tenable for the nation’s consistent poor showings on the HDI scale. In the last eight years of touted reform agenda cutting across all sectors of national life, little has been done at bringing to fruition the Millennium Development Goals target of 2015.


The country is in infrastructure far behind less endowed countries in the African continent. It will take a miracle to stop the country from sliding on the HDI table because nothing serious is being done to address problems plaguing the identified areas.


President Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration has promised to make the nation among the 20 most developed economies by 2020. Meeting this official target will largely be determined by how far the country has gone by 2015 in realising the MDGs target.


Due attention must be placed on infrastructure that are near obsolete or poorly maintained. The deepening energy crisis has to be handled as no country can make meaningful progress without stable electricity.


The time to redress the identified problems in the HDI report and catapault the nation to top spot of respected countries of the world is now. This is a reminder of the enormous work that is ahead. Excuses no matter what they are cannot solve these problems.