Bauchi State Health Commissioner, Dr Halima MukaddasThe Bauchi State office of MamaYe-Evidence for Action collaborated with the Bauchi State Accountability Mechanism for Maternal and Newborn Health (BaSAM) and the State Ministry of Health to organise a journalists’ roundtable as part of the dissemination of the 2015 Bauchi State Health Budget Scorecard. The roundtable was held on Tuesday, 26 July 2016 in the conference room of the Bauchi State Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists.About 35 people, including 27 male and female reporters and photographers, as well as television cameramen, attended the roundtable. Other participants were the Bauchi State Commissioner for Health, Dr Halima Mukaddas, and civil servants from the State Ministry of Health (SMoH), and a representative of the Bauchi State Agency for the Control of AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (BACATMA).Cross-section of journalists and CSOs at the eventDr Mukaddas chaired the event and publicly presented the scorecard, after which she fielded questions from journalists and civil society members. Afsa Bulak, Secretary of one of BaSAM’s three sub-committees – the Knowledge Management Committee (KMC) – was the lead discussant of the scorecard at the roundtable.The scorecard, which used a traffic light approach in scoring the state’s performance in four major areas—Transparency, Participation, Adequate Resource Allocation, and Budget Releases—examined issues such as:
- Annual publication of state health accounts
- Adherence to budget timetable
- Timely publication of budget timetable
- Timely release of funds to the health ministry and departments
- The participation of the public in the budgeting process through consultations with CSOs and communities; and
- The adequacy of allocations to health.
In presenting the scorecard, the Commissioner acknowledged that the state’s performance was below par in some areas, largely because the scoring initiative was new to the state. She promised that under her watch there would be incremental improvements. In particular she said that although the next scorecard will probably also have many ‘reds’ because the process had commenced before the presentation of the 2015 scorecard, it will be an improvement. She also said some of the areas in which the state underperformed were because of extraneous factors over which it had no control. These include the usual late conclusion of the national budgeting process. Like most states, Bauchi largely depends on allocations from the federation account. She singled out the 2016 national budget, which was passed in May, as the budget with the longest process period in the history of the nation.Some other key issues that came up for discussion at the roundtable were the controversy over the 2016 allocation to health, and procurement of antiretroviral drugs for people living with HIV in the state in the light of the reduction of donor support in the area.The Governor had pledged 16 per cent of the entire state budget to health, but analysts said the actual allocation eventually came down to 13.5 per cent. The Commissioner said she only recently got to know of the matter, and promised to get to the bottom of it with a view to correcting the “error” if indeed there was an error.She also explained that the state government was trying to turn around the state’s poor human resources for health situation by, among others, getting bonded beneficiaries of scholarships and other support schemes who had not served out their bonds, to fulfil the bond conditions. She said an HRH audit had found out that there were 11 pharmacists practising in the state when the government had in fact paid for the training of more than 100, many of whom were still indebted to the state.Apart from supporting the state in the collection of data, with which the scorecard was produced, MamaYe also supported the actual production of the scorecard. The roundtable will be followed by a publication of the scorecard in the Daily Trust newspaper issue of Friday, 29 July 2016.Click here to view or download the scorecard.