The latest bad report has come from the World Bank, which ranked Nigeria 152nd out of 157 countries captured in its maiden human development index, HDI. The World Bank president, Dr Jim Yong Kim disclosed this as the ongoing annual meetings in Bali winds down.
Declares Dr Kim, ’Education outcomes in Nigeria are very poor. And Nigeria is one of the most important countries not only in Africa, but in the world’.
On the reasons for Nigeria’s poor performance Dr Kim said,” We provide quite a bit of support to Nigeria in terms of its health budget. But we feel that the overall spending on health is just too low. Just 0.76% of the GDP.
In another development, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, IMF, Christine Lagarde, called on Nigeria’s Federal Government to make the nations’ refineries and oil assets work for the benefit of Nigerians. Mrs Lagarde may be referring to the situation where oil rich Nigeria exports its crude oil to refineries abroad, making the reimported refined products extremely expensive. This practice preempts any effort at the profitable export of refined products from Nigeria.