NIGERIAN governments should be ashamed of their attitude towards the future of the country. This attitude is not entirely surprising since governments are fully interested only in the present as it affects them and their cronies.

Children bear the brunt of this indifference.

It is a shame that with the billions of Dollars Nigeria receives annually from crude oil sales; it will depend on a $10.4 million grant from Japan to fund children’s health programmes. The amount is the equivalent of sales of 140,000 barrels of oil (we sell more than two million barrels of oil daily).

Nigeria does not need to wait for donor agencies in the face of the depressing statistics of the Nigerian child.

These statistics, while they should challenge governments to action have not elicited the commonest interest in governments that are determined to fritter away the opportunities the country’s oil resources provide.

Our children are at higher risk of dying in the first five years of their lives, than in most other African countries, including Sudan that has been at war for more than three decades. These are United Nations statistics.

They are not getting better. Out of every 1,000 live births in Nigeria , 110 die before they are five years old.  The figures exclude the children of those who can change the circumstances of the Nigerian child and the country.

Comparative figures are Egypt (29 deaths in 1000 live births), South Africa (45) and war blistered Sudan (65).

Where our children survive, malaria, cholera (more than 300 people died in Adamawa State this year), polio will ensure that they do not improve on the average life expectancy of 48 years.Statistics complete the picture of a compromised future. According to Professor Oladimeji Oladepo of the University of Ibadan , 41 per cent of Nigerian children are stunted and about 25 per cent of them are underweight.

Paltry annual budgetary allocations to health will ensure things will worsen. In addition, there is high illiteracy rate and access to food, safe drinking water and health institutions is limited whether in the urban or rural areas.

Malnourished children with poor mental and physical development are the leaders of Nigeria ’s future. Nigeria ’s ability to grow a future without healthy children runs on the deceit of promises and important speeches.

Mr Toshitsugu Uesawa, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to Nigeria said at the event, “I earnestly hope that this project will foster the welfare of Nigerian children. I encourage Nigerians to continue to take action to accomplish the MDG”. Nigeria is disinterested in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Japan has been making grants to Nigeria since 2000. What did Nigeria do with the assistance?

Does a country that overspent its budget with N1.2 trillion in 2010 require N1.5 billion from Japan to look after its children?  While the country withers, its leaders are busy searching for what next to appropriate to themselves. Who cares for a dying Nigeria ? Definitely, not these leaders