From Obasanjo’s obstinacy to Yar'Adua’s earnestness for real due process - Vanguard

WANT to know why Nigeria’s development is arrested? Consider this:A delegation of the Senate Committee on Education, led by its chairman, Senator Joy Emodi, and comprising Senators Ahmad Lawan, Ahmed Mohammed and Senator Kaka Mallam, was the first to raise the issue during the current budget round. At the beginning of its oversight visit to the Ministry of Education and its parastatals on November 11, 2007, the Education Committee members expressed outrage at what they described as the yearly expenditure of N110 million reportedly spent on HIV/AIDS awareness in the ministry headquarters. The Education Ministry is not in the business of HIV drugs manufacturing. It is also not in the business of importing equipment with relevance to HIV.

“How can we justify spending N110million just for sensitisation in the Ministry of Education not even (for) the parastatals or the unity schools but just the Ministry for AIDS sensitisation. I am worried about that because we need a lot of money to be channeled towards repair of our infrastructure in the schools,” Senator Emodi said at that occasion.

“It is very important to sensitise people but, certainly, not to use this kind of money. Colleges of Education and small schools got N50m for sensitisation and not even buying AIDS drugs but just to tell them in Colleges of Education about AIDS. Does that make sense? It doesn’t”.
This was the type of budgetary proposals Nigerians have been saddled with for a very long time. Full Story