CSOs engage Ebonyi LGAs on release of budgeted funds for nutrition, adolescent health services 

A nongovernmental organization, Women Friendly Initiative and its Ebonyi cluster member organization, Civil Resource Development and Documentation Centre, CIRDDOC Nigeria, have tasked key officials of Ebonyi local government areas to urgently pursue budget release for nutrition and adolescent friendly health services in their areas.

 

The Organisations made the call during a one-day stakeholders meeting in Abakaliki and Ezza South local government areas of the state.

 

Women Friendly Initiative (WFI) and her cluster members are implementing a project on accelerating national strategic plan of action for nutrition and sub-national advocacy for implementation of Adolescent and youth friendly health services in 5 states in Nigeria and the FCT, including Ebonyi.

 

The activity is supported under the USAID- palladium’s Strengthening Civic Advocacy and Local Engagement, SCALE project.

 

The organizations through their joint advocacy had secured separate and improved budget lines for nutrition, Adolescent and youth friendly health services in the two pilot local government areas of Ebonyi State: Abakaliki and Ezza South.

 

While the budgetary provisions for Abakaliki rose from N1m in 2023 to N20m in 2024 for the both sub-sectors, that of Ezza South rose from N1m to over N4.5m and N5m for Nutrition and Adolescent Friendly Health Services respectively.

 

However, in a meeting with 10 key council stakeholders in each of the local government areas recently, the organizations decried the magnitude of malnutrition in the state, adding that the most affected groups were children between the ages of 6 to 59 months, nursing mothers and under five children.

 

They expressed dismay that most of the provided funds in the two local government areas have not been released for improved services in the two sub-sectors, and tasked the concerned officials to do the needful so as to guarantee the health and wellbeing of Ebonyi children, mothers and adolescents.

 

Speaking to newsmen, the project Program Manager with the Women Friendly Initiative, Paul Aondofa Uche who also represented the Chief Executive, Francis Eremutha, and his counterpart from CIRDDOC, Goodness Mgbaja, explained that accessing budgeted funds for activities on nutrition and adolescent friendly health services would improve the quality of life and drastically reduce the rate of maternal, child and adolescents mortality in the state, adding that the failure of the concerned to access the provided funds was a breach of their earlier commitments.

 

Uche said: “This is a follow-up advocacy for budget release.

 

“Earlier last year, we started advocating for budget creation for adolescents, youth-friendly health services plus nutrition in Abakaliki and Ezza South local government areas, and we are happy that they have created these lines, but most of them are yet to release the funds.

 

“We are following up with them to see that they release the funds meant for the two budget lines.

 

“The most interesting part of the program will be that the budget lines are released and activities conducted so that we can be discussing with the stakeholders on the impact of the money they have released.”

 

“Then we would have no more challenges convincing them for further increase in the budget lines.”

 

Speaking further, the Monitoring and Evaluation officer for WFI, Rosemary Adejoh, added that the objective of the meeting was to increase pressure on the decision makers to release funds allocated to Nutrition and adolescent youth friendly health services (AYFHS) and to hold them accountable for updates on AYFHS and Nutrition in the targeted locations.

 

The concerned officials and stakeholders, including the Nutrition and youth-friendly focal persons: Gladys Njaka and Elizabeth Odo for Abakaliki and Christiana Nome for Ezza South local government areas, with other key staff, made an undertaken to vigorously pursue the release of the funds so as to meet the goals of the project before the next quarter.

 

Meanwhile, in an interaction with the Chairman, Abakaliki Local government Council, Chief Ebere Nwogba, he maintained that there have been no memo for release of funds for such activities ever brought to his table by the officers concerned without receiving approval.

 

Nwogba appreciated the Nongovernmental organizations for their concerns, assuring that his administration was following after the step of Governor Nwifuru who has given priority to issues bordering on health and general wellbeing of Ebonyi people.

 

The event featured the official handover to the stakeholders the compendium of the state of Nutrition and Adolescent Friendly health service in the Five focal states of the project: Ebonyi, Kwara, Plateau, Nasarawa, Benue, and Abuja.

 

The document is titled Fact Sheet on Nutrition and Adolescent Friendly Health Services.