Kogiflame
Former Ondo State Governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, has renewed his call for a drastic increase in public spending on health and education, warning that Nigeria’s development will remain stunted unless government tackles what he described as the “sibling alliance against development: illiteracy and ill-health.”
Delivering the Convocation Lecture of the Confluence University of Science and Technology, Osara, Kogi State, titled: “Ill-health and Illiteracy:
Siblings Alliance Against Development,” Mimiko said Nigeria’s human development indicators paint “a dismal picture,” despite recent fiscal reforms that have boosted government revenues.
He acknowledged some ongoing policy efforts in the education and health sectors but insisted they need to be ramped up and aggressively pursued. According to him, “improved accruals from subsidy removal, exchange rate unification and the expected commencement of tax reforms in 2026 present a rare opportunity for governments at all levels to redirect more funds to human capital development.
Mimiko placed special emphasis on childhood nutrition, which he said lies at the intersection of health, education and agriculture, and should be treated as a national priority. To him, the free school meal programme has to be rebranded and decentralised so that the federal government could set general guidelines, standard and limits while the actual project implementation should be devolved to sub-national governments.
The programme could be reworked to incorporate “the irreducible minimum of one egg, one child, one day. This will make compliance and accountability easy to track. It will also have a catalytic effect on our livestock industry,” Mimiko said.
Speaking briefly on the question of insecurity, Mimiko said: “to address the challenge of insecurity in Nigeria, we must decentralise the police service. No federation like Nigeria anywhere has the type of centralised police structure we have in Nigeria.”
On needed industrialisation, he expressed optimism that the “Nigeria First” policy of the Tinubu administration could help shift attention away from over reliance on market forces and toward deliberate public investment needed to drive industrialisation.
“As government revenues improve, the visible hand of the state must ensure fair redistribution by channeling more public resources into healthcare and education,” he said, noting that such “investments are essential for producing the skilled and innovative citizens required to drive sustainable national development.”
Mimiko stressed that the expectation of improved investment should apply not only to the Federal Government but also to state governments, which he said must reflect the new fiscal capacity in their budget priorities.
“Our message is simple,” he concluded, “More public investment in health and education must be prioritised. The alliance of illiteracy and ill-health must be confronted and reversed if Nigeria is to achieve meaningful development.”
