LIFE expectancy in Nigeria has increased from 46.1 years in 1990 to 53.1 years in 2015, according to 2016 UNDP Human Development Report.

The report, which was launched in Abuja on Tuesday, April 18, however, showed that Nigeria dropped to 152 in Human Development Indices, HDI, against her 151 ranking in 2014.

“The report shows that between 2005 and 2015, Nigeria’s HDI increased from 0.466 to 0.527 – a 13.1 per cent increase,” Edward Kallon, UNDP resident representative, said.

“This is encouraging, but given the humanitarian challenges already alluded to, and the economic recession witnessed in 2016, there is an urgent need to design policies and programmes to ensure that the upward trend in human development is not reversed.”

He said that the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, ERGP, recently launched by the federal government could keep Nigeria on a positive development trajectory.

Ojijo Odhiambo, UNDP’s economic advisor for Nigeria and ECOWAS, said just as Nigeria was improving, other countries of the world were improving as well.

He said: “A lot of people are being excluded from the development process; women, girls, indigenous people, migrants and refugees and ethnic minority are being left out in the development process.”

—  Apr 19, 2017 @ 12:00 GMT

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