Group calls for better budget performance in Jigawa health sector

From Mika’il Tsoho, Dutse

The Jigawa Maternal Newborn Child Heath Accountablity Forum (JiMAF) has called on Jigawa health sector to fast-track the procurement process for more investment in public health sector.

The call was made by the acting chairman of the forum comrade Isah Mustapha during the dissemination of findings from 2024 health sector budget performance and 2025 approved budget analysis to the Jigawa State house of Assembly committee on health, organized by JiMaf and supported by UKaid LAFIYA project.

The findings revealed that,  the 2024 budget undergoes series of transformation,  (Supplementary and budget review) notable changes were movement of funds from capital to recurrent in order to finance contingency transfers, legal, service and Ministry of Power.

According to findings the Overall state budget performance stood at 299.218bn (78%), adding that, a greater performance of the recurrent expenditure component (Personnel and other recurrent) for the financial year is 99.64bn (78.6%)Significant increased in the capital expenditure , rises from 102.239bn (40.2%) in Q3 to 199.56bn ( 77.7%).

It maintained that, the Health sector budget performance surpasses the overall state average across all budget components while the trend analysis of the health sector allocations in the last 8 years is generally inconsistent, it range between 10% to 15.7% against the state budget.

“Despite the state commitment in the signed Mutual Accountability Framework (MAF) document, the overall allocation to health sector dropped from 10.7% in the approved budget to 9.9% in the revised 2024 budget against the overall state budget.The approved budget allocation to health sector was fluctuating from the approved budget of 36.208bn to 41.208 in the supplementary budget, it suffered another adjustment to 37.8bn in the revised budget ( a budget cut of about 4bn). The capital expenditure suffered a budget cut of about N4 billion, this might be attributed to low budget performance”, the findings revealed.

The forum then recommended that,  Jigawa state government through the health sector has nearly achieved its MAF commitment of ensuring utilization of 90%, the sector has achieved 83% budget performance in the 2024 fiscal year, thus there is need to honor the commitment in the next fiscal years. It  should maintain the momentum achieved in the Q4.The state Executive Council should ensure that, autonomous capital budget implementation by all agencies within the sector, this will reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks and facilitate timely budget implementation.

The forum also urged government to fast-track the procurement processes across all quarters to enhance performance and avoid  budget-cut as observed in 2024 fiscal year, as well as to honor its MAF commitment of allocating at least 15% of the total state budget to the sector.