Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, on Sunday, warned the Federal government against misusing the $1.07 billion allocated to the health sector in the 2025 budget.
Atiku in a statement in Abuja asked that mechanisms must be put in place to ensure the funds are used to improve healthcare services rather than vanish under suspicious circumstances.
The 2023 Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate noted that claims that animals such as snakes, termites, and monkeys were responsible for the disappearance of public funds should not befall the allocation to the health sector.
Atiku also called for a transparent and accountable framework to track how the allocated money is spent for the benefit of the people.
His statement read, “To this end, the Federal Government has to be deliberate about putting mechanisms in place for public audit and accountability in its US$1.07 billion budgetary appropriation in the health sector.”
He specifically queried the Federal Government for not providing comprehensive information on how it plans to expend the over one billion dollars in the primary health sector.
Atiku noted that while healthcare, especially the primary sector deserves rapid investment in order to promote access to quality and affordable health services to Nigerians, “it will be immoral of the government not to provide extensive details of how the money allotted for the purpose would be dispensed.
“We have read that the Federal Government has a plan to expend a whooping sum of $1.07 billion in the primary health sector. This amount is in addition to the N2.48 trillion, which had earlier been proposed for the health sector in the initial draft of the budget.
“This development gets even more troubling when the government equally announced that the $1.07 billion it is adding to the health sector at the sub-national level was mainly sourced through foreign loans and a fraction of it being provided through an international donor agency.
“In other words, Nigeria is expected to pay these loans back and it is required that the Nigerian people know the details of these loans and that its expenditure must be conveyed in a policy envelope that will explain how it will be spent.”
Atiku said further, ”Failure of the Federal Government not to commit to a single physical infrastructure in expending the budgetary provision smacks of fraud”, warning that claims “of animals such as snakes, termites, gorillas and monkeys swallowing public funds must never be the fate of the funds budgeted for the critical sector of health in the 2025 Budget.”
