By Philip Yatai

Some citizens’ groups on Thursday conducted a four-year health sector budget trend analysis with a view to generating evidence for advocacy to increase investment in the health sector.

The analysis was supported by Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL), a governance programme being funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

The State Lead Facilitator, PERL, Mr Adejor Abel said that the goal was to engage the government toward influencing budget releases for health services in the state.

According to Abel, the analysis is to also improve health sector investment and spending for effective utilisation of resources.

“The analysis is very critical to get the government to ensure more resources are released in the health sector because over the years, that has been a challenge.

“The main goal is to generate the needed evidence for advocacy to government with a view to increasing health financing and ensure cash backing of allocated funds

“This will ensure the implementation of health programmes and projects,” he said.

Mr Istifanus Akau, the State Partnership Facilitator, PERL, said that the analysis would show the level of investment and improvement in service delivery in the health sector.

According to him, service delivery will be a mirage if the government is not willing to invest in the health sector.

“We need to also channel advocacy to human resources for health to ensure functionality of health facilities.

“This is key in ensuring quality service delivery in the health sector,” Akau said.

The budget analysis by the citizens groups showed a huge gap between allocation and actual performance.

The analysis shows that out of the N98.7 billion allocated to the health sector between 2018 and 2021, the actual performance was N52.2 billion representing 52.8 per cent, with a variance of N46.6 billion.

“This shows that in spite of efforts by the state government to meet the 15 per cent allocation to the health sector in line with the Abuja declaration, actual budget performance had remained very low.

“This development leads to poor performance in service delivery”

“There are equally grey areas in budget performance data that need clarification, particularly the recurrent sharp rise in performance data in 4^th quarter of every year,” they said.

The citizens groups are representatives from the academia, Kaduna Social Protection Accountability Coalition, Kaduna Maternal Accountability Mechanism, and Coalition of Associations for Leadership, Peace, Empowerment and Development.

Others are Open Government Partnership Technical Working Group on Open Budget, and Information and Communication Technology experts.