Group Worries Over Inconsistent Funding For Health Sector In Jigawa
By Ahmed Aminu, Dutse
The Jigawa Health Partners, has expressed worries over inconsistent budgetary allocation for health services in Jigawa State.
In a statement made available to The Syndicate in Dutse, the group noted that the budgetary allocation and release of funds to the state ministry of health has been grossly inconsistent and inadequate to provide vital services to the public by health centres and hospitals in the state.
Executive Director of Exceptional Leadership and Integrity Promotions Initiative (ELIP), a member of the group, Comrade Isah Mustapha, said this was arrived after a review and analysis of the sector.
The Syndicate reports that Jigawa Health Partners consists of civil society organisations, the academia and media working to facilitate the reduction of maternal and child mortality in the state.
The statement said the analysis revealed poor policy implementation and low budget performance by the ministry.
According to the statement, an appraisal of the 2024 Q3 budget showed movement of funds from capital to recurrent in order to finance contingency transfers, legal service and Ministry of Power.
“An appraisal into the health sector budget performance reveals that, sectoral allocations in the last eight years is generally inconsistent, which ranges from 10% to 15.7%. Apart from 2022 and 2023 financial years, the state has never reached the 15% Abuja Declaration target.”
It noted that though the state had signed the Mutual Accountability Framework (MAF), “The overall allocation to health sector dropped from 10.7% in the approved budget to 10.3% in the revised 2024 budget against the overall state budget”.
“The 2024 budget allocation to health sector, which was fluctuating from the approved budget of N36.208bn to N41.208 in the supplementary budget, has finally dropped to N39.457bn in the revised budget, a budget cut of about N2bn. The capital expenditure suffered a budget cut of over two billion Naira.”
The partners however said, “we could not ascertain the actual expenditure of IMPACT projects none of the reporting entity has the data”.
“The findings further reveals that, out of 33 capital projects and programmes, only 18 received funds from January to September while the remaining 15 (such as psychiatric hospital, Ophthalmic Unit in some General Hospitals, Family planning, etc.) received zero releases.
“Some of the budget items such as operational research, ophthalmic, PPM unit, and Family planning, etc.) continue to suffer abysmal or no release for years.”
The partners recommended that the supervision and budget of JISACA remain in the Office of the Deputy Governor, not the ministry of health.
It advised the ministry to ensure strict adherence to its procurement plan and conduct of monthly review meeting of sector procurement plan.
They appealed to the state executive council to ensure that all MDAs access at least 20% of the their capital budget quarterly as enshrined in the performance bond.
The partners further advised the Jigawa state government to honour its commitment on the MAF document to allocate at least 15% of the total state budget and utilizing at least 90% in subsequent years.
They called on planning department to develop strategies that will encourage program managers and technical officers on timely funds request for optimal budget utilization.
“Health monitors and CSOs should strengthen their community engagement efforts on community mobilization for ownership and sustainability of health services, programmes and projects”.
They recommended that government should ensure prompt and regular payment of ongoing projects to enhance budget performance.
