2016 Maternal and Child Health budget analysis

An analysis of the 2016 health budget proposal for maternal and child health focusing on key ministries and agencies with direct roles for MNCH revealed that previous budget lines for Midwives service scheme, family planning and maternal and child health insurance did not appear. This means no money was budgeted within these agencies for procurement of important commodities such as contraceptives by the government of Nigeria.
In a related twist on the 9th of February during the Ministry defence of the budget at the National Assembly, the Minister for health claimed that the budget presented did not reflect what he had previous knowledge of.
Civil Society are working seriously to point out all the shortcomings in the budget proposal hoping changes are made before its approval.
Click below link for details of analysis
http://www.slideshare.net/EstherAgbon1/2016-maternal-and-child-health-budget-analysis

Nigeria's 2016 budget adopts the Zero Based Budgeting method

In a lay person’s language, Zero-based budgeting starts from the ‘scratch’ where each project or programme has to make a case for why it should be funded.

The recent announcement by the Federal Government[i] to adopt the Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB) method for the development of the 2016 Federal budget met with mixed feelings from the Accountability and Budget transparency advocates. While some greeted it with optimism, many others still wonder how this system can best serve Nigeria.

Wikipedia defines zero- based budgeting as a method of budgeting in ‘’which all expenses must be justified for each new period. Zero-based budgeting starts from a “zero base” and every function within an organisation are analysed for its needs and costs’’. Meaning that all project of the Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) will be treated as ‘’new’’ and as such each project will have to put forth reasons to buttress its importance before it is funded.

For more clarity a look at the 2015 budget of the Federal Ministry of Health headquarters revealed some ongoing projects such as ‘’Coordination of Servicom reform activities, quarterly monitoring of E- payment compliance, renovation of headquarters office building’’ under capital votes, which have been a recurring decimal on the budget line item of the Ministry. These budget lines have been funded on an ongoing basis regardless of whether the objectives are still relevant or not. I suspect citizens have not felt the impact of Servicom for a while now yet it is being funded.  In addition, while renovation of office building appeared under capital votes, maintenance of office building and residential buildings which seems like a repetition appeared under overheads votes.  Although  these budget lines were replicated it was curious to see that they got topped up in every budget cycle!

In a ZBB method, projects such as these will now have to be thought through and re-evaluated to ascertain its importance in order of priority in meeting health goals. The draft budget from the MDAs will then be presented to the the responsible government agency for approval and depending on how convincing the justifications presented are, projects might either be accepted or rejected and thereafter the MDAs will have to work with what has been approved for the period. The potential advantage for this kind of budgeting is that it gives opportunity for projects and programmes to be evaluated on an ongoing basis to ensure relevance and eliminate undesirability.

While this method of budgeting helps the budget planners to settle for the most important needs of the people, the MDAs will have to adjust their planning systems to categorize their plans ab initio as high priority, medium priority and low priority to take into consideration availability of funds for projects.

The ZBB also presents an opportunity for advocates to justify why a new budget line item should be introduced or expunged.  However, the drawback might be to ensure that the budget funders remove all forms of self-interest and subjectivity from the project selection process.

On the other hand, the Incremental Base Budgeting method previously used by the Federal Government up until the announcement was made concerning the 2016 budget is that which supports additional funding of already existing projects. In this method, the budget planners also have to justify why they should have additional funding for the ongoing project, however the drawback here is that additional funding for the next budget cycle may be reduced when budget funders discover that the previous budgets were underutilized. This method gives room for wastage as often times employees may not want to lose their budgets thus may indulge in frivolous spending.

According to existing literature, no one method is better than the other, both have inherent advantages and disadvantages. The responsibility for effective implementation and utilization of approved budgets therefore lies with the MDAs. It is important that while the changes to the budgeting style are ongoing, the government does not lose sight of the need to overhaul and strengthen the capacity of budget implementers through an effective performance management, monitoring and evaluation system.

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[i] leadership.ng/business/.../fg-to-adopt-zero-based-budget-for-2016-osinb...

2015 MNCH Federal budget allocation

I daresay that 2015, the year that ushered in the most awaited change in Nigeria might not hold such a big change for maternal,  neonatal and child health (MNCH) in Nigeria. Dwindling oil prices grossly affected allocation along the lines of MNCH in the Federal budget. key agencies such as the National primary Health Care Development Agency, the National Health Insurance Scheme experienced huge budget cuts while FMOH HQ had budget lines which totally disappeared in 2015.
With a budget cut of over 81 percent NHIS is poised not to provide  free MCH services.SURE-P funds to support MCH  reduced by 71 percent. SURE - P funds for polio also totally disappeared, leading the writer to question if the budget developers actually envisoned a polio free Nigeria! Open the link below to read the full analysis

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-Tv1n2XWi3gRXd4RmJha0tXdDQ/view?usp=sharing

What does it take for a woman to be in Politics?

It was not an easy task conceptualizing leadership training for young female activist and women in politics, having them sit together in a training geared at awakening interest of young females between the ages of 15 – 30, while strengthening the skills of the older women on lobbying and advocacy for political leadership, but it turned out to be an excellent strategy.

The older women were so excited and eager to share with the younger ones their experience in navigating the political space in Nigeria. A space clearly isolated for men but one that only accommodates women who are twice as tough.

There was no dull moment from the beginning of  the Leadership training of young women and Women in Politics which kicked off on the 9^th of December 2014. 15 young women activist and 10 women already in politics came together to enhance their knowledge on strategic leadership in the political, economic and democratic space. They discussed their challenges and tried to identify resources available to women and how to access these resources to enhance their political leadership. One big challenge the women identified was the lack of funds to finance their campaigns, while the men get support from each other because most of them hold influential positions, it is often difficult to find the very few rich women supporting other women to aspire to positions, and they would rather support men. 

So what does it take for a woman to be in politics and remain in it? The following are excerpts and quotes that have made such an impression on me that I will never forget.

“Men will intimidate, be determined”

“Politics is sweet”

“if you love politics, be a good mixer”

“Its free and fair is a lie, there will always be one gun shot or another”

“If you cannot stand challenges, don’t think about Politics”

“As a woman you must maintain your integrity and decency, else you will fail”

“Watch out for the men, they will harass you sexually, when  you resist they call you a stubborn woman, but then you earn their respect”

The three days interactive session ended on Thursday 11^th December 2014 with the women providing suggestion for taking this initiative forward by strengthening women’s followership and campaign structures.  The big unresolved issue is how more women will get funding for their campaigns as politicking and campaigning requires huge funding.

At the end of the meeting, each woman representing  a  state in Nigeria, developed a plan of action on how to widen their reach to other young women and pledged to mentor them. On the part of the younger girls, they strategized on how to get more of their peers involved in school leadership and other leadership positions open to young women. This is the first time an NGO would organise a training of women within this wide age bracket and it was a commended by all the participants. Amidst the several valedictory messages this one summed it all;

“ We  came in empty but we are going back fully armed not with guns but information for our communities, local government, state and nation’s good”

Budget Analysis

Hello friends, here are some analysis carried out earlier in the year and training modules for your learning

Budget Accountability for Maternal health

It was interesting getting the reactions of maternal and child health advocates at the meeting convened by ActionAid to discuss budgetary allocation to Integrated maternal and child health (IMNCH) in the 2014 Appropriation Act for Health. It turned out that participants were shocked at the amounts allocated to issues considered germane to mitigating the impact of maternal and child mortality in Nigeria.

For instance the National Primary health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) which received an allocation of N17billion for capital projects introduced over 150 new constituency projects that would cost not less than N7billion. Constituency projects are primarily construction of primary health centres. Not only were the projects irregularly distributed across the country but the focus was more on constructing facilities rather than provision of services. As a budget advocate I am worried by the fact that this magnitude of projects would be introduced in one fiscal year. 

Having being involved in the pre enacted budget proposal advocacy I was excited to see NPHCDA’s proposed total budget of  N11billion increased to N19bn, but became very disappointed when I discovered that over 7bn would be channelled to constituency projects.

MCH Budget Accountability Stakeholders meeting

I am wary about constituency projects because these are projects within the purview of the politicians and as a representative of the agency commented during the meeting, these constituency projects defies the developmental plan which the agency set out to accomplish. For instance some of these constituency projects would be cited in Local government areas or wards that already have those facilities ideally this should not be, but because the political leader want to score points with the people they will take projects to areas that already have them.  The analysis further revealed how imbalanced project distributions were with Delta state having 38 projects and Osun and Yobe left with none.

Routine immunization was allocated N2.1b for a population of about 26million children between 0-5 years, this leaves one wondering whether our budgeting and planning actually reflects demographic information.

The full analysis can be downloaded here   https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VRSyzRAgiZwciFaT7S3J8ZYoNz-joE38u4L9wVnqBEg/edit?usp=sharing

Budget Transparency a tool for enhancing citizen’s participation

The demand for citizen’s participation in the budget process has been strident in the last decade in Nigeria, causing the government to take on measures to make the budget planning processes participatory. This has however not been without challenges due to a culture of secrecy and the mindset of public officers towards non-state actors.


The Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2007 and the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (2011) are key instruments that support citizens’ participation in the budgeting process. But the extent to which these laws have created an enabling environment is still questionable in the Nigeria context. For instance the FRA suggests public consultations in preparation of the draft Medium-term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and publishing of such in the gazette after approval by the National Assembly. The 2013 public consultations on the MTEF were held in Lagos and Abuja with notices of less than two working days thus limiting effective and meaningful participation from the public.


Citizens’ participation is important because it underscores accountability and non-discrimination in allocating public resources. Citizens can participate in budget planning processes only if the process is transparent and inclusive.


Oftentimes budget transparency is limited to making federal or state appropriation laws open and accessible to the public. But budget transparency entails more than that.


Budget transparency is a full disclosure of all relevant fiscal information in a timely and systematic manner or simply put public access to budget information. The extent and quality of such access to information shapes public understanding of government’s decision pertaining to budgets, determines the extent of public participation and forms the foundation on which the government can be held accountable for the budget.


Some of the relevant fiscal information as relates to Nigeria include: the Medium Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Paper, budget proposal, enacted budget, citizen’s budget, in-year reports, midyear review, year end report and audit reports.


In Nigeria the Budget Office of the Federation, a department of the Federal Ministry of Finance is responsible for putting this information in the public domain through a website. Publication of fiscal information by the budget office is not timely, oftentimes or never made public at all.


As at October 2012, the midyear review of the 2012 budget which took effect from April 2012 is not yet in the public domain nor accessible to citizens. The 1st and 2nd quarter reports for 2012 only got published on the website in October 2012.The 2011 fourth quarter report was made public in the fourth quarter of 2012. Untimely release of budget reports limits the participation of citizens in monitoring and appraising implementation with a view to holding their government accountable.


The annual Audit report in a budget year is supposed to be released at the end of the suceding year. For example the audited report for 2012 would be released on or before the end of 2013. However in Nigeria audited reports are hardly made public and are often released two years after the implementing year! The absence probably a budget law which compels government to a budget calendar may be contributing largely to the ineffectiveness of government in adhering to these practices.


Best practices Nigeria may learn from are encoded in the IMF Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Responsibility (2007). It comprises four main sections – Roles and responsibilities, Open Budgets, Public Availability of Information and Assurances of Integrity.


Of interest are sections two and three which deal with issues on open budgets and public availability of information. Each of these sections presents a list of good practices some of which are practiced in Nigeria but to a limited extent.


It is therefore important to highlight some areas of Good Practices and draw our recommendations in order to ensure fiscal (budget) transparency and public participation.


The current practice is that call circulars are sent out to Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDA) around midyear (June or July)to send in budget proposals. By October a draft bill is put together by the Federal Ministry of Finance and sent to the National Assembly by the President. All things being equal the National Assembly approves the bill by the end of December and it is signed into law by the president in January of the new year.


It is important Nigeria follows a budget calendar backed by law, which specifies exactly what time the budget process should begin and end and strictly adhered to. It should provide adequate time for the draft budget to be considered by the Legislators. The government may consider a budget calendar that starts from March to December which allows for the Medium Term Expenditure Framework to be sent to the NA four months before the beginning of the next financial as stipulated by the Fiscal Responsibility Act.


With such a law in place it will enable timely submission of midyear report on budget developments to the legislature and quarterly updates, which should be published.

Audited final accounts and audit reports, including reconciliation with the approved budget, should be presented to the legislature and published within a year as opposed to the current practice where audited reports are not available in the public domain earlier than two years after implementing the budget

In addition practices such as identifying separately receipts from major revenue sources, including resources from foreign assistance should be properly documented in the annual budget presentation. This will give a clear picture of the gross revenue for the period.

Budget documentation should also report the fiscal position of sub national governments (states) and the finances of public corporations.

A clear and simple summary guide to the budget should be widely distributed at the time of the annual budget. This will aid citizens in understanding budget provisions and those interested in monitoring can do so

Results achieved from major budget programmes should be presented to the legislature annually. This will assist them monitor budget implementation and make appropriate adjustments where necessary.

The timely publication of fiscal information should be a legal obligation of government. Current practice is not bound by law and so information are released at will and untimely thus affects effective and timely interventions by the public.

Calendars for fiscal information should be announced, released in advance and adhered to. If this is practiced Citizens will be informed timely on when particular actions are taking plan and engage the process as appropriate.

Finally, the government should ensure it publishes a periodic report on long-term public finances. This will keep legislators including the public abreast of relevant information needed for long term planning.













written by Esther Agbon