Leadership (Abuja)
Justus Nduwugwe
18 August 2008
The Minister of National Planning, Senator Sanusi Daggash has revealed that donor countries and agencies have made aid commitment to Nigeria worth $6,277,010,552 in the last decade.
However, only about fifty per cent of the amount or $3,244,728,807 has been disbursed for the various projects over the same period.
The Minister made this revelation last Friday while presenting the outcome of the review of donor assistance to Nigeria from 1999 - 2007 at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja.
According to the Minister, "Together, the institutions within the UN system have the biggest contributions. Their collective budget and disbursed figures form 89 per cent ($5,593,285,438) and 52 per cent ($1,688,353,258) respectively of the total grants received in the last decade".
He also stated that it was surprising to see that within the UN system, UNICEF is the biggest contributor, adding that of the total disbursed grants, UNICEF's share is 41 per cent ($1,346,093,278). UNDP, he also said, disbursed 8 per cent ($263,373,595). UNICEF is followed by DFID with 17 per cent or $559,981,950, USAID 13 per cent or $421,866,283 and EU 12 per cent or $373,667,317.
The Minister had earlier observed that the result obtained from the study reveals that easterly story of so much aid being pumped into Africa is not correct. What the above story does, he argues, is to lump all African countries. "It was perhaps wrong to treat Africa as a homogenous entity. These are what has been described as 'aid orphans and darlings' by Jones and Kataglou (2005)", he stated.
He further explained that aid orphans are countries that received significantly less aid than considerations of poverty; efficiency as a guiding principle for aid allocation between countries would imply. Donor darlings on the other hand, he said, received significantly more aid (Jones and Kataglou - 2005).
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