Nigeria schools scheme gets red light

Britain's aid watchdog gave an education programme in Nigeria the red light today after finding it had squandered its £230m budget.

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact slapped its second-lowest "amber-red" rating on the scheme because it had too few teachers and little support from local authorities.

The commission found that a third of the eligible children - about 3.7 million - were still not in school and those that were received little in the way of education.

It said that the Department for International Development (DFID) schemes "will only become sustainable when they can routinely help to unlock state governments' budgets to fund the required improvements both adequately and equitably."

DFID said in a statement it would "carefully review" the report but claimed that inspectors only visited 1 per cent of Nigeria's schools.

Nigeria has lost an estimated £196 billion in taxable income since the 1970s through tax havens, according to experts at the Tax Justice Network.

>.....MORNING STAR UK