LAGOS, Dec 2 (AFP) - President Olusegun Obasanjo, his cabinet, and lawmakers should all take an AIDS test to raise awareness of the disease, Nigeria's main trade union leader told Saturday newspapers.

"President Obasanjo, the ministers, legislators can spearhead the response by voluntarily appearing in the laboratory for HIV/AIDS tests," said Adams Oshiomhole, president of the Nigeria Labour Congress, quoted by The Guardian.

If they do this, "their acts would help significantly in sending the right messages to the people," he said.

Oshiomhole, who was named earlier this year to head an AIDS awareness committee in Nigeria, was not making a novel suggestion.

In 1987, Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, the then health minister, did an on-camera AIDS test of then military ruler General Babangida and other members of the government.

Nigeria had recorded its first AIDS patient only in 1986 and all the ministers were shown at the time to be negative.

Whether that would be the case now is another matter.

With a much lower HIV/AIDS prevalence rate than countries in eastern and southern Africa, Nigeria has ignored the AIDS crisis in the rest of the continent for years.

But the AIDS rate is now fast rising and last year reached 5.4 percent of the sexually active population, expected now to spread fast from high risk groups into the general population.

Speaking Friday, on World AIDS day, Oshiomhole said he wanted the government to consider widening the scope of automatic HIV/AIDS testing to schools.

However, he criticised the importation of condoms into the country, seen by AIDS experts and donors as a crucial part of fighting the spread of the HIV virus.

The availability of condoms "has the tendancy to make people more promiscuous while relying on the use of condoms," he was quoted as saying.

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