The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has handed copies of its Advocacy Memorandum On the 2023 Federal Health Budget Proposals to lawmakers at both chambers of the National Assembly.

The Advocacy Memo is published as part of activities for the Right to Health Cluster for the Nigeria Strengthening Civic Advocacy and Local Engagement (SCALE) project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by Palladium.

CSJ also published other reviews of the 2023 Federal Budget being considered by the National Assembly. They are: 1. Review of Critical Issues in the 2023 Federal Budget Proposal focusing on key macroeconomic issues. 2. Recommendations on the Line Items of Frivolous, Inappropriate, Unclear and Wasteful Estimates in the 2023 Federal Appropriation Bill. 3. Review of the 2023 Federal Health Budget Proposal.

The advocacy memo notes that the total sum allocated to the Ministry of Health out of the overall expenditure of N20,507 ,942,180,704 in the 2023 federal budget proposal is N1,097,703,830,504 inclusive of the N47,649,312,042 provided for the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF). This is 5.35% of the proposed budget expenditure. This is just about one-third of the 15% Abuja Declaration commitment.

However, there are other provisions related to health in the budget vis, provisions for the National Health Insurance Scheme fund of MDAs (N105,797,840,669), NHIS for Military Retirees (N4,481,145,223), NHIS for Corps Members’ (N5,000,000,000) and GAVI/Immunisation Counterpart Funding (N69,570,142,633). These add up to an extra N184,849,128,525. This increases the health vote to N1,282,552,959,029 being 6.25% of the proposed overall expenditure. This is just 41.5% of the Abuja Declaration. 15% of the overall budget vote would have amounted to N3,076,500,000,000. The extant health vote leaves a funding gap of N1,978,796,169,496.

On the basis of the foregoing, this Advocacy Memo recommends that the vote to the Ministry of Health should be increased to at least 10% of the overall vote in the sum of N2,050,794,218,070.4.

Secondly, the memo suggests that it is imperative for the legislature in collaboration with the executive to design a transparent, accountable and empirical standard, on the basis of which all agencies including Teaching Hospitals under the Ministry of Health would account for their independent revenue and ensure that it is part of the budget figures.

The Ministry’s headquarters should not also retain 79.11% of the entire capital vote. It should be disaggregated and only those for operations at the headquarters retained there and others sent to the responsible agencies. Again, the details of all bulk votes without details totaling N310,252,155,300 and the service-wide votes for health should be provided to the National Assembly and made public to the Nigerian people.