Inter Press Service - August 6, 2001
Remi Oyo

"This terrible thing called HIV/AIDS for which there is no cure must not be allowed to take the upper hand in our country", Obasanjo told members of the armed forces and the police in Ibadan, some 120 kilometres north of the commercial city of Lagos at the weekend.

Obasanjo has ordered free distribution of condoms to all soldiers who in 1999 recorded a 5.4 prevalence rate. The government also has ordered importation of anti-retroviral drugs and is providing free screening.

Warning against indiscriminate sex by military personnel of whom he is commander-in-chief, the President said, "efforts must be made to ensure that they (soldiers) have themselves and their partners protected".

Obasanjo, a military leader between 1976 and 1979, said when he joined the army in 1958 "it was an offence to have or to be affected by sexually transmitted diseases (STD)...but that was during the colonial army".

Since Nigeria, with a population of 120 million, became independent in 1960, the rule has changed. "It is no longer an offence to contract it (STD) but to conceal it", he said.

Obasanjo appealed to the officers to educate their men about "illicit and unprotected sex, particularly abstinence and faithfulness to their partners".

The issuance of a code of conduct by the army leadership will please religious leaders who have argued that the unbridled promotion of condoms promoted promiscuity. In March, radio advertisements promoting the use of condoms were pulled off the airwaves for offending cultural and religious sensibilities.

The adverts -- packaged by the Society for Family Health, a non- governmental organisation (NGO), which controls about 80 percent of the condom market in Nigeria -- were withdrawn by the Nigeria Broadcasting Commission, the state-appointed regulatory agency for the broadcasting medium.

The Commission said then that "the adverts clearly contravenes the code of advertising practice and the broadcasting code which state that no advertisement should contain any item likely to be offensive to public feeling or disrespectful to human dignity".

The adverts have been returned after modifications.

Obasanjo's plea to the soldiers comes as Dr Leke Pitan, Commissioner for Health in Lagos State confirmed an increase in the spread of HIV/AIDS in the region. Mofolaji Dada of Lagos University Teaching Hospital, who conducted a survey on the spread of HIV/AIDS, says more than five percent of Lagos' 12 million people, including prisoners, have the virus. "The study reveals that 6.7 percent of the prisoners in Lagos are HIV positive", he says.

The government is providing free screening test for pregnant women in public hospitals in addition to the provision of anti- retroviral drugs for people living with the virus, Dr Pitan says.

The United Nations announced last week in New York that 15,000 Nigerians will start receiving anti-retroviral drugs, beginning Sep 1.

Stephen Lewis, Special Envoy on AIDS in Africa of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said after a tour of three African nations, including Nigeria that the anti-retroviral treatment will be "at least initially larger than anywhere else in the continent".

Of Africa's estimated 25 million people living with AIDS Nigeria accounts for nearly three million.

Lewis said "millions of lives can be saved and tremendous progress can be made with what is now available".

He disclosed that the Nigerian programme would begin by treating 10,000 adults and 5,000 children who either have AIDS or were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. "The numbers will go up by the thousands over the next few years", Lewis added.

Besides treatment, NGOS working with People Living with AIDS say counselling rather than free or compulsory screening should be emphasised by government.

Speaking at a workshop in the eastern city of Enugu recently, Pat Nzegwu, of the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa, said proper counselling should be emphasised. "We as counsellors don't agree with mandatory screening," she said. "We want everybody to go for screening voluntarily".

Nzegwu argued that "counselling will help in enlightening the society on the dreaded disease. We know that AIDS has defied all efforts in terms of drugs. The only option left is HIV/AIDS counselling and education".

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