"...In 2006, for instance, the governor of Rivers State, Peter Odili, had a budget of $1.33 billion to spend, considerably more than the budgets of some other west African countries, such as Mali and Niger. Moreover, Mr Odili had far fewer people to spend his money on.
Not that much of the money is actually spent on them. An almost total lack of transparency hides where most of the money goes, but a Human Rights Watch report managed to catalogue some items in the Rivers State budget for last year. The governor's office spent $65,000 a day on transport and travel and over 1.5 billion naira ($11.5m) on new cars; two new helicopters cost 5 billion naira, on top of the previous year's new jet; about 1.3 billion naira went on gifts and catering. By contrast, the capital budget for the health sector was 2.8 billion naira, in a state with some of the poorest, least healthy and worst-educated people in Africa." (complete article available at http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9070922)
3 comments:
Thats a good article bighead. This odili guy and others lke hom are the people causing all the problems of Niger Delta. I wonder why the Dokubos, the Enahoros, the Clarks etc cannot go and wring the necks of Odili and his ilk.
The hyper link you provided to The Economist does not work at all.
you could copy and paste the hyperlink in your browser address bar or google "the economist rivers state nigeria"
hehe where in the world is he anyway, he's gone underground!!
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