By: Ahmed Rufa’i
The Jigawa State Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Accountability Forum (JiMAF) has raised concerns over the state’s poor health budget implementation, urging the Ministry of Health to step up its performance to ensure quality healthcare services delivery.
Speaking during a one-day Public Policy Dialogue on Increased Health Investment held at the Manpower Development Institute (MDI), Dutse, the Executive Director of JiMAF, Comrade Isah Mustapha, lamented that the state’s health budget execution stood at 57.1 percent as of the third quarter of 2025—far below the expected 75 percent benchmark.
Citing figures from the Budget Implementation Report (BIR), Mustapha explained that personnel expenditure reached 72.8 percent, recurrent 47.9 percent, and capital expenditure only 50.4 percent.
He noted that spending patterns across the quarters showed minimal improvement, reflecting systemic implementation challenges.
Mustapha also expressed worry that Jigawa has continued to fall short of the 15 percent Abuja Declaration health funding commitment, as well as the Mutual Accountability Framework (MAF) pact between the state government and the FCDO.
He revealed that sectoral allocations have fluctuated over the last five years—13.6%, 16.1%, 15.7%, 12.1%, and 9.2%—in approved budgets from 2021 to 2025, with even sharper declines in the revised budgets.
The paper presented by JiMAF further highlighted delays in MDAs’ submission of quarterly budget performance data. While the number of unreported programmes decreased from 19 in Q2 to five in Q3, the group said weak inter-agency coordination persists due to the absence of a tripartite data validation process involving the ministries of Budget, Finance, and other reporting bodies.
JiMAF urged the State Executive Council to significantly scale up investment in the health sector to sustain donor-supported interventions, meet Abuja Declaration targets, and uphold MAF commitments.
The group also called for the enforcement of a harmonized budget and financial reporting template aligned with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) standards, along with capacity-building for MDAs’ planning officers to ensure uniform application across institutions.
