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By Akanji Alowolodu, Bauchi
It has been discovered that the right to health is major challenge for persons in Bauchi state and even in the whole of Nigeria considering the budgetary allocations on health are not properly implemented.
The observation was made by the Programme Officer of a CSO, Center for Social Justice (CSJ), Martins Eze while speaking with Health Reporters in Bauchi.
He said that it was consequences upon that realization that his organization is going round the Focal states “making our contributions to see how we can improve on the realization of the right to health in these states”.
He said that, “Bauchi is one of the states we are engaged in, so we are here in Bauchi for a validation meeting of a pre-health budgetary memorandum. We have developed a memorandum which we hope will increase and improve the budgeting process in Bauchi state”.
According to him, “what we are here to do is to engage the health stakeholders for them to make their inputs in to the document, make additions and subtraction where necessary and then have a proper and wholistic and well validated document”,
He added that, “so that when we have this document validated. We can then use it to engage the government here in Bauchi state and the legislative arm of government with the hope of realizing a Bauchi where the health budget responds to the minimum service of Healthcare that people of Bauchi State are entitled to”.
While reacting to the issue of implementing agreements and decisions taken on health issues in the country, the CSJ Programme Officer said that, “I would not say that because advocacy is a very serious and painstaking exercise which takes time and long process”.
Martins Eze stressed that, “Sometimes you need to keep repeating something over and over again before the duty bearers will eventually feel to implement that thing” .
He further said that, “That you said something the first time and it didn’t work does not mean that you can’t say it the second time, the third and the fourth times. So, for us, what we are doing here is to say something that we have probably say before and we will keep on saying it hoping that one day some of these best practices will be realized”.
“We discovered that Bauchi state generally is performing well in the health budgetary allocation when compared with other states we are working with. So, I will give Bauchi kudos because they are doing well in a lot of areas, however, there is still so much room for improvement”, he reacted to the present situation in the state.
The Programme Officer added that, “we hope to see a situation where the actual expenditures on health budget especially as it concerns capital Expenditure on capital projects will improve. We are seeing a situation where the actual Expenditure on capital components of the budget is actually lower than and below average, we want that to be improved on”.
He expressed happiness over the participation saying that, “The participants are really enthusiastic, the zeal is high, the commitment is high, from the government angle, the CSOs, the Journalists, members of the J4PD, the stakeholders are bringing in a lot of zeal and determination to the process.
“My hope now is that, that zeal they are bringing in will actually translate into the positive results when the duty bearers, the government starts implementing the recommendations but the zeal of the participants is really high”, he added.
On members of a CSO, Journalists for Public Health Development Initiatives (J4PD), he stressed that, “The participation of members of the J4PD has been higher than even what we thought, because we have gone to some other states where we have partners we are working with but the participation and contributions of J4PD has been very high and in fact higher than what we have seen in other partners”.
According to him, “it really shows that they are really on the ground and doing a lot of work, we can also see from the government participation through the quality of the government officials they were able to bring, they brought the right stakeholders to the programme, if we had come to the programme and then we didn’t see the government officials, the program will not be successful generally, these government officials are here because of the roles J4PD is playing and really working here in Bauchi”.
The meeting was organized by a USAID funded program titled Strengthening Civic Advocacy and Local Engagement (SCALE), being implemented by Center for Social Justice (CSJ), in collaboration with a Bauchi based Civil Society Organization, Journalists for Public Health and Development Initiative (J4PD).
