COVID-19 Nigeria by Mories Atoki & Georgios Radoglou

Recommendations

Info

Ever before COVID-19 hit West Africa, Nigeria’s health sector was already facing huge challenges – the country is one ofthe biggest contributors to Africa’s disease burden and the more astute have traced this to years of wrong spending prioritiesand a cultivated leaders’ attitude of “Dirt can’t kill African man”. Some say financial mismanagement of allocated funds forthe health sector paired with unbridled corruption and incompetence further exacerbate the pursuit of those wrong priorities.Amidst the Global COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Government even decided to cut the health budget from N44.4bn to25.5bn whilst allocating N27bn to the renovation of the Nigerian National Assembly building complex (source: Daily Post03.06.2020).Currently being the poverty capital of the world with over 95mn citizens amongst the poorest, unseating India of this dubiousrecognition in 2019, Nigeria’s government seem to be at odds on how to tackle the country’s poor health narratives aspolitical and traditional office holders’ responsive discordant expressions became more audible in light of the uncoordinatedefforts to tackle the pandemic.It could be time consuming to trace the issues but in order to provide the necessary perspectives, it is essential for one tounderstand that Nigeria, at its best of times, has only committed 4.5% of its national budget to health, which is less than athird of the Abuja Declaration of 2001which committed to 15% of the Annual National Budget. Worse still, after subsequentA public healthcare facility in Nigeriayears of low budget implementation, it is fair to say that less than this 4.5% gets spent wisely at any given time and evenworse, a substantial portion of the released funds end up being misappropriated. Corruption thus significantly underminesefforts to achieve UN Sustainable Development Goal 3, which is to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all atall ages”.“Extremely poor. The medical facilities arepoor. We operate a predatory, neocolonialcapitalist system, which is founded onfraud and exploitation, and therefore, youare bound to have corruption…”- Falz in his ‘This Is Nigeria’ song releasedin May 2018As if that was not already enough, the COVID-19 crisis met Nigeria with depleted financialreserves in addition to a sudden collapse of Oilprices, cutting the inflow of revenues for the FGfinancial apparatus by almost 90%.Nigeria's 2020 budget breakdown
Graph above: Nigeria Healthcare spending (source: World Bank)Private admissions by United Nations personnel indicate that Nigeria’s health sector is literally a tale of two cities – on paper,the sector is vibrant and delivering value for investments but in reality, facilities are simply neglected buildings lackingcompetent & qualified staff, functional equipment, basic medication and basic functionalities in general.
Page 1: Mories AtokiCEO ABCHealthGeorgios R
Page 5 and 6: airports continued to operate, rece
Page 7 and 8: It also demands vigilance from civi

COVID-19 Nigeria by Mories Atoki & Georgios Radoglou

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?