There is no single budget line for family planning in the 2022 proposed budget presented by the President Muhammadu Buhari to the National Assembly last week.
This concern was raised by the Partnership for Advocacy on Child and Family Health (PACFaH@Scale), a coalition of 23 civil society organisations working on areas of family planning.
PACFaH@Scale project is anchored by the non-profit development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC), a coalition dedicated to capacity building for the expansion of social capital and accountability in Nigeria.
The advocates said the total health sector budget for last 20 years has an average below 6% of the total country’s budget.
“Nigeria has been unable to meet its commitment to the health sector. The 2022 proposed health sector budget is 4.97% of the total health budget; miles away from the 15% Abuja Declaration,” the CSOs said.
They said that with a rapidly growing population rate confronted by pandemic, epidemic, climate change, food insecurity and social uprisings, “the entire budget has no mention of specific budget line item for family planning, child spacing, provision of contraceptives or public awareness campaign on child spacing.”
The advocates said “the budget seems not to have any specific information or plan to address family planning and the threat of population explosion.”
“The recurrent expenditure (overhead and personnel cost) is 57% of the total proposed health sector budget, while the capital expenditure for the sector is 24% (note that a large fraction of this is administrative capitals). Also, service wide votes for health care is 13% and 6% Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF),” the coalition said in a jointly signed statement on Wednesday.
They complained that the health sector over the last decade, aside the poor capital budget allocation, has a relatively poor capital budget utilization rate staggering around 60% (which are more administrative capital for the MDA buildings renovation, repairs, procurement of computers, office furniture, constructions, research, etc).
While congratulating the Federal Government on the family planning budgetary line items in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, there is a need to be consistent with FP financing as a budget line item in the 2022 proposed health sector budget. This can be done by reintroducing FP line item missing in the proposed 2022 health budget, the CSOs said.
“We call on the Federal Government to ensure full implementation of the Nigeria Family Planning Blueprint launched in 2020 and its dissemination at the subnational levels,” the statement said.
They also advocated “for the full coverage of the family planning services under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).”
