•Dr Olusegun Mimiko
Former governor of Ondo State, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, has called on the Nigerian government to invest more in the health and educational sector of the country, stating that without such investments, Nigeria will remain underdeveloped.
Mimiko stated this today while delivering the maiden convocation lecture of the Confluence University of Science and Technology, CUSTECH, Osara, titled: “Ill-Health and Illiteracy, Siblings’ Alliance Against Development.”
Mimiko said Nigeria has remained underdeveloped because it has not put in commensurate investments in the education and health sectors, reports Vanguard.
He specifically drew his position from the maternal health, life expectancy, government health and education expenditures, nutritional status, literacy rate and research output and patents of the country.
”Nigeria, with less than three per cent of global population, accounted for 29% of global maternal deaths, translating to an approximate maternal death of 1 in every 7 minutes. All these speak to the uncomfortable fact that Nigeria is indeed the most dangerous place in the world to give birth!”
On education, he said, “According to the September 2025 data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), Nigeria is one of just 10 countries that account for more than half of the world’s illiterate adults, with a figure of 43 million.
”According to UNICEF, one in three children is out of school in Nigeria: 10.2 million at the primary level and 8.1 million at the junior Secondary school level. It is instructive that Nigeria’s out-of-school population of 18.3 million accounts for 15% of the global total and it is instructive that this number is higher than the population of about 160 countries, as listed by Worldometer, 2025.
Mimiko jokingly said if the country failed to address its educational and health gap, in 10 years’ time, it may not have professional health workers to rely on but herb makers and native doctors.
”While one may not totally endorse SUU’s methodology or collective bargaining prowess, there is surely something fundamentally wrong with a wage structure that allocates a monthly salary of less than. 500,000 naira to a professor, including those who have been at this academic career peak for upwards of 20 years!
“It is about time we, once and for all, and in a justifiable and sustainable way, tackle the issue of emoluments and funding generally, in our tertiary institutions.
“Apart from other obvious benefits, this surely remains one of the viable toolkits for addressing the JAPA phenomenon.”
He called on governments at all levels to be intentional about the two critical sectors, urging the federal government to continue with its present education policies such as NELFUND and digital literacy, to readdress these gaps.
“This is one compelling reason why we should be thinking of resuscitating the school feeding program, albeit in a better packaged manner, with inbuilt transparency in implementation.
“I propose that even in this, the Federal Government should not be directly involved in implementation, but should remain its guardian angel, prescribing standards and incentivising the sub-national government to mainstream the program, while monitoring for compliance.
”Perhaps our free school meal program should come with 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.
”Unquestionably, inadequate funding of health and education can lead to, among others, poor human capital development, resulting in a less skilled and less health workforce, reduced economic productivity and competitiveness, and increase poverty and inequality.
“On the other hand, socio-economic underdevelopment can lead to limited government revenue, making it difficult to allocate sufficient funds to health and education, among other critical sectors of the national economy.
”Childhood nutrition, which can straddle education, health and even agriculture, must be given particular attention. As it is expected from the federal government, so it is expected from the sub-national,” he said.
