DFID’s Programme in Nigeria

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) on securing another important debate. In particular, I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) on making a very informative contribution. She expressed particular concerns about education and electricity. I share those concerns and will speak about them. I also thank the hon. Members for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), and for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) for making very important contributions in their usual styles.

The International Development Committee’s report on DFID’s programme in Nigeria was stark. It offered a scrutinising insight into DFID’s work in what is one of the world’s fastest growing economies and one of its most deprived nations. The report highlighted several pieces of positive work that DFID is doing in Nigeria; the hon. Members for Stafford, and for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow, both mentioned that.

DFID is spending money effectively on fighting malaria in the country, and the positive lessons that health professionals have learned and applied from anti-malaria programmes has had a knock-on benefit for the health sector more widely. DFID used a range of expertise to help deliver the fairest elections in Nigeria’s history. That allowed President Buhari to stand strong on his mandate of delivering economic growth, reducing inequality and tackling corruption. DFID is rolling back the neglected tropical diseases that have taken hold in the country, enabling more children to go to school and more adults to go to work. We commend that work and believe that the Government should hold up those successes as examples of DFID’s money being put to use to benefit the people of not only Nigeria, but the UK.

Nevertheless, as has been said, the report and hon. Members have expressed concerns about areas that need improvement. First, there is the economy. I welcome the work done on that. It is absolutely clear that there has been economic growth, but has it been inclusive of the whole country? I do not believe it has. The disproportion between growth in the south and the north is massive. That needs addressing, and I look forward to the Minister’s comments on that. In the earlier debate, a point was made about the CDC; with its increase in funding, there is an opportunity to look seriously at investment in industry in the north of Nigeria.

The second issue that could do with improvement is healthcare. While DFID spends quite a large amount of the total funding that goes to Nigeria on healthcare, the report highlights a number of basic hygiene problems in hospitals, which is counterproductive to the efforts. I urge the Minister to liaise with the Nigerian Government on addressing those issues. On the face of it, they are not major, but they are important.

Quite a lot was said about corruption and governance by the hon. Members for Stafford, and for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow, and by the Chair of the International Development Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby. The first point they made was that we have seen disproportionate growth—Nigeria has in a very short time become one of the countries with the fastest growing number of millionaires—but, unfortunately, that wealth has not been spread across the breadth of the country, and that needs addressing. If strange-shaped buildings could resolve corruption issues, we would all be in a much better place, but tragically, it is not that simple. I align myself with the comments made earlier on that front.

On governance, we have to accept that DFID has done some magnificent work around the 2015 election—the freest and fairest election in Nigeria. Power changed hands with very little trouble, but we cannot be complacent, and that work must continue. I know that there is a plan to continue that work until 2019, and that is clearly important. To address the corruption and governance elements—I hope that the Minister will accept and agree with this point—we must further strengthen institutions across the board. We need to strengthen the judiciary and the rule of law to allow investors and Nigerians to have confidence in the system. We are on the road to that, and I have every confidence that DFID will follow that through to 2019, when the next election will take place.

The two problematic areas where we have concerns are education and electricity, which the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire mentioned. Education is a universal right. We would all agree that everyone has the right to at least a good primary and secondary education. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Nigeria. The International Development Committee rightly pointed out that 25% of all those between 17 and 22 years old in the north of the country have fewer than two years of education. Just three out of five children will have completed grade 4. Those statistics have led to a dire literacy situation in the country; 85% of girls in the north-east cannot read, and 44% of those who have completed grade 6 are unable to read a complete sentence in English or their preferred language.

Bridge International Academies, which works with DFID, provided evidence to the Committee that stated that 90% of the communities in which it works are able to afford to send their children to school. That is good, but what happens to the other 10%? Do they send none of their children to school, or do they make a choice and send either their boys or girls to school? The stark reality is that when given that choice, the evidence shows that they are more likely to send boys to school. That further highlights the issue that Members raised about the lack of education offered to girls. Not only does that mean that DFID is supporting work that does not reach the poorest in Nigeria—the very people we should be reaching out to—but it raises further issues about the children who reside in the poorer states, which are often not reached by private education. One figure struck me: the Committee calculates that, on a conservative estimate, sending three children to school would cost $234 in annual fees, in a country where more than half the population lives on less than $2 a day. That is an easy calculation for everyone to make.

If DFID is to support an expansion of private sector education across Nigeria, what will happen to the children in poorer regions of the country, where less than 90% of people can afford schooling? We recognise that private schools are key providers of education in Nigeria, but we are steadfastly opposed to any DFID programme that sees an expansion of private, fee-paying schools in the country, particularly if it is done at the expense of public schools. There is a prevalence of private schools in Nigeria, but that does not mean that DFID has to accept that. I hope that the Minister will tell me what the Department is doing to promote an expansion of public education in Nigeria that can reach the whole population, not just the wealthiest.

Electricity production and distribution is of concern. Access to a stable, secure and reliable electricity network is of great importance, if not an absolute necessity, for promoting growth and freeing households from the burden of self-generation. Despite the immense importance of the electricity sector and Nigeria’s growth rate, the country has the highest number of Africans without access to electricity. DFID clearly recognises that that is a problem. If electricity is not supplied to millions of Nigerians, DFID will struggle to fulfil its aims and objectives in the country, so it put in place the Nigeria Infrastructure Advisory Facility.

On the face of it, allocating more than £100 million to help bring light into the homes of 96 million Nigerians seems a positive step, until we look at the details of what the money bought. It brought in Adam Smith International—an international organisation that ultimately advised the Nigerian Government to put Nigeria’s electricity production and distribution networks up for sale, with the goal of creating a commercially viable and privately owned power network. While the intentions may have been good, at best the programme proved to be ill designed; at worst, it focused not on the needs of Nigerian consumers, but on private interests. It is putting electricity even further out of reach of many Nigerians, and it is loading purchasers in the energy sector with huge amounts of debt, preventing them from making any meaningful investments in the network. Tariffs had to be raised, rather than lowered, and the situation was so bad that a prominent university, Ahmadu Bello, was forced to cut power for 12 hours a day. Privatisation of the energy sector has not helped poor Nigerians or businesses to get secure access to the electricity network. It is hard to describe the endeavour as anything other than a failure for the poorest in the country.

It has been a year since the report, so I hope that the Minister can shed some light on how the matters it raised have been addressed. DFID has made very strong progress in certain areas of Nigeria. There have been commendable efforts to tackle malaria and neglected tropical diseases, and to strengthen confidence in democratic institutions, but we must address the other issues on which further progress can be made. I look forward to the Minister’s response.