We are committed to financing the Health sector- Minister of Finance

The federal government is committed to funding child spacing and the health sector as part of its strategic plan to improve human capital development and foster a productive citizenry under the leadership of President Muhammdu Buhari.

The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed disclosed this when he hosted a delegation of the Medical Women’s Association of Nigeria under the Partnership for Advocacy in family and child health at Scale, PACFaH@Scale, in her office on Friday.

The Minister, who thanked the delegation for a visit, assured that her ministry will always prioritize the health sector’s funding, especially on issues bordering on the multilateral agreement and other commitments Nigeria has entered into.

While urging advocates also to improve their advocacy work around utilization and efficiency relating to funds released, she assured that Nigeria would continue to improve the health sector’s funding, as can be seen since the assumption of office of this current administration.

“Despite the failure to meet the 15% commitment, Nigeria has progressively funded the health sector with incremental funding. She also noted that regardless of competing priorities, the federal government will prioritize funding for health and family planning therein. Effective utilization of funds continues to be an issue with MDAs, and with competing priorities, this will be an obstacle to incremental funding. E.g., regarding the BHCPF, which also caters to child and family health issues, the federal government is making moves to fulfill its commitment for the 1% CRF. Still, the non-responsiveness at the state level to provide counterpart funding has slowed the process. MDAs are also showing low utilization capacity. ” She said

She then noted that the federal government is taking innovative steps to improve fiscal transparency through Monitoring and Evaluation for budget tracking on an MDA-by-MDA level via the Budget Office of The Federation’s website. The Accountant General’s office has also initiated a transparency monitor to show governments’ spending.

She called on MWAN-PAS to advocate the health MDAs to improve their capacity to utilize the funds released and increase advocacy efforts for the girl child education to improve family planning uptake.

Earlier, the head of the delegation, Dr. Minnie Oseji, who is the President of the Medical Women’s Association of Nigeria, briefed the Minister on the association’s ongoing International conference and called on the federal government to support the funding of the health sector.

“From the 2017 and 2021 national budget, N6.8 billion has been allocated to family planning, out of which N3.6 billion was released. What was observed was that not all funds allocated were released, especially in 2017 and 2018, where 93% and 33% of the fund allocated were released, respectively. Also, the N809 million allocated in the 2021 fiscal year has not been released. Recall that the N900 million funding gap for 2019 was proposed to be released from the Service Wide Vote (SWV),” She added.

She, therefore, called for the release of allocations to enable the achievement of targets set by the administration under local and international bilateral and multilateral agreements.

Written by: Hassan Aliyu Karofi

dRPC/PACFaH@SCALE (PAS)