FIONA BRUCE MP REPORTS BACK FROM AID WORK IN NIGERIA

FIONA BRUCE MP REPORTS BACK FROM AID WORK IN NIGERIA

Fiona Bruce MP spent last week in Nigeria, inspecting UK Aid programmes, in her role as a Member of Parliament’s International Development Select Committee. The Committee’s function is to check on the use of aid money by the UK Government Department for International Development (DfID).

During the week, Fiona and seven cross-party MP colleagues from the Committee met aid workers, teachers, clinicians, and Government officials, including the Vice President of Nigeria and the Speaker of the Nigerian House of Representatives.

Fiona Bruce MP said “Checking UK Aid is well-spent is a critical job, as 0.7% of UK taxpayers’ money is now used to support poverty-stricken people in developing countries, as well as to promote global peace and security which directly benefits us here in the UK. In this role, over the past four years, I have worked in many countries, but none so disturbed as Nigeria – we spent several days in the north of the country, where Boko Haram have caused havoc – this is the first country I have inspected aid in where I have had to learn to wear body armour!”

“During our visit we met friends and supporters of the Chibok schoolgirls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram almost two years ago – the majority of whom are still missing – and discussed what more can be done by the international community to help trace them.”

“We met UK-funded aid workers, including those combatting malaria. Nigeria is the global epicentre of malaria, of which 300,000 children die each year, half of the children who die of malaria globally. The UK has helped tackle this in Nigeria since 2008 and as a result millions of people have been protected from the disease by treatment and distribution of net-beds. The UK-spearheaded scheme reaches even the remotest communities using trained local volunteers, and as a result of this programme the Nigerian Government now has a strategy to try to eliminate malaria from the whole of Nigeria. It was hugely encouraging to hear that hundreds of thousands of lives have been transformed through this malaria-prevention programme.”

“Another incredibly inspiring project which we checked on was for the treatment and prevention of blindness. Incredibly, thirty million people have been protected from blindness through a scheme implemented by the charities Sightsavers and Helen Keller International, funded with UK Aid money. No less than seven diseases are treated simultaneously, much of the work being carried out by locally-trained volunteers at an amazing cost of about 10p per treatment. We were told that in some areas where there had been 80% blindness, tests after treatment of a sample of five thousand people showed that the treatment was 100% effective – not one person had gone blind. This treatment, like the malaria treatment, helps whole communities – if a parent goes blind, they can’t work, their children have to support them, and often lose their education and a chance to earn their own livelihood in the future. Sightsavers reported to us that the UK-funded scheme has resulted in much-improved school attendance. This is a scheme I would like to see implemented more widely.”

“Our Committee also inspected a DfID-funded midwifery training course. Child mortality at birth is very high in Nigeria. Young women, often from remote communities, are being taught midwifery skills through a UK-funded scheme. Whilst the course itself is good, our Committee discovered a grave cause of concern, which is the poor state of hygiene in the hospital in which the students were learning, something we ascertained was not a problem exclusive to this hospital, and which I therefore immediately raised with the State Governor to feedback on our visit later in the week, and to which I will also require reference for improvement in our Select Committee Report to the UK Government which we will produce during the next few weeks, following our visit.”

“A further way in which UK Aid is helping in Nigeria is in the schools. We visited a number of schools and saw that the English-teaching syllabus which has been written by the UK DfID, and is available for every Government school in the country, was being effectively used. DfID is also helping to train teachers in this, as there is a national shortage – many children do not therefore go to school, and the numbers of children to be taught are huge; in one primary school we visited there were over 13,000 being taught in two shifts a day! People in the UK may ask how such work helps – and apart from providing the students with an international language which can improve their job opportunities later in life, ensuring that young people are in education is critical, since if they have nothing to do, they are easily enticed into terrorist groups such as Boko Haram, which has a publically-declared link with international Islamist terrorist group ISIS, so there is real benefit to our peace and security to help young people in this way.”

“One of the schools we visited was in a refugee camp where children receive no Government assistance for their schooling – the open-air school is run by volunteers from the local community and volunteer teachers. Our Committee ascertained that there is a need for more structured support from the Nigeria Government for children in such camps – particularly the smaller ones like this, with approximately 900 people in it. There are 2.2 million refugees – known as internally displaced persons (IDPs) – in Nigeria following Boko Haram attacks, and whilst in larger camps the UN coordinates education provision, there is a need for more support for smaller camps such as the one we visited near Aruja.”

“The good news was that, following a change of government in Nigeria several months ago and increased determination on the part of the new President to improve security, attacks by Boko Haram have been much reduced and Boko Haram itself is being pushed back by Government forces into increasingly reduced territory. Hopefully, at some point in the not-to-distant future, the IDPs who have been forced out of their homelands will be able to go home, and support for this is one of the issues we discussed with Nigerian Government representatives when we met with them at the end of our visit.”

“It is a real privilege to serve on the International Development Select Committee, and to inspect effective aid schemes such as these. Wherever I travel in the world, the effective use of UK Aid is respected, and often copied, and seeing this on the ground benefiting millions of lives of mothers, fathers, and children with hopes and aspirations just like us makes me very proud to be British.”