Ms Lola Talabi Oni, a Technical Advisor for Bureau of Statistics, has said that Nigeria and Nigerians do not get value for monies invested in the health sector.
Oni told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on Wednesday in Abuja said that Nigeria spends an average of 1.6 per cent of its budget on health, “but the outcomes are worse than countries spending far less”.
She spoke on the sidelines of the 2019 “StateofStates, Investing in People Forum”, organsied by Budglt Nigeria.
The theme for the 2019 Forum is “investing in People”.
NAN reports that Budglt Nigeria is a civil technical organisation concerned with raising standards for transparency, citizen engagement and accountability in public finances.
The Technical Advisor said that Nigeria was spending on key development issues like healthcare and education, but regretted that the citizens were not getting value for what was sunk into the health sector.
Oni also regretted that only 19 states were able to meet their recurrent allocations with Internally Generated Revenue allocations from the federal purse, without borrowing.
“Borrowing is not always a bad thing if the country uses that money to invest wisely,” she said.
The Technical Advisor called for more focus on healthcare to determine service delivery levels.
She pointed out that Nigeria was below world average of doctor density of 15 doctors to 10,000 people.
“Regionally, the country has 3 doctors per 10,000 people in South-South, 2.8 in South-West, 2.5 in South-East, 2.5 in North-Central, 0.8 in North-West and 0.6 in the North-East.
“Federal Government creates policies without considering feasibility,” she declared.
The Technical Advisor called for more investment in human capital, and particularly emphasised the need to hire more doctors and teachers instead of “ghost workers and a bloated civil service”.
