Towards tackling poverty especially among children and women in the North-east, UNICEF has challenged stakeholders from the region to sit up. ABARI MUAZU reports.
The challenges of poverty, hunger, malnutrition, lack of access to basic education, healthcare and other essential services faced by children have continued to take its tolls on their well-being and survival especially in Nigeria and other under-developed countries of the world.
This has continued to worry governments at all levels and other global/humanitarian organisations like UNICEF, WHO and other United Nation agencies which collaborate with one another to bring succour to children and women through various interventions and initiatives.
These partnerships have produced positive outcomes that have drastically reduced the rate of child mortality rate, malnutrition, numbers of out-of-school children among many other challenges which impeded the growth and survival of children.
However, despite the gains recorded as a result of this partnership and investments, children still face many challenges in various social sectors which require urgent interventions and sustained efforts.
Unfortunately, there is a serious decline in budgetary allocations and releases especially in the North-east which is still living with the effects of insurgency and humanitarian crisis.
UNICEF intervention
This unfortunate state of affairs became a concern to UNICEF known for its commitments towards championing the cause of children and mothers in line with its mission to engage policy makers and stakeholders in sensitive sectors like education health, finance and budget, women affairs, WASH.
The interraction included commissioners, permanent secretaries, directors, journalists, experts and other stakeholders in a two-day workshop on North-east strategic policy dialogue on social budgeting for child sensitive sectors and way forward for the region.
The opening ceremony
Addressing over 100 participants who attended the event from five states in the region with the exception of Borno which couldn’t make it due to flood, the Chief of UNICEF Bauchi Field Office, Mohammed Kamfut represented by UNICEF’s social policy specialist, Dr Yusuf Auta said the dialogue which brought together diverse group of stakeholders actively engaged in budget development and implementing, aimed to collectively chart a pathway for adequate and sustainable financing of the social sectors with the view to improving the lives of the children in the region.
He expressed serious concerned that in the last three decades, global efforts were geared to honour commitments to children which includes taking all necessary measures to safeguard and advance their rights, ensuring that they have the resources to survive, develop and thrive as outlined in the convention on the rights of the child but despite remarkable progress in reducing poverty and enhancing the living conditions of millions of children and families, many of the world poorest and disadvantaged children continued to be left behind.
According to him, Nigeria’s population is estimated at above 205.9 million with 49.5 percent (102 million ) being children aged 0-17 years. Similar to many African countries, children in Nigeria are disproportionately affected by poverty due to their vulnerability status in society which have long term repercussions on their wellbeing extending into adulthood. He added that based on 2020 report on multi dimensional child poverty analysis supported by UNICEF Nigeria, over 47 million children approximately 47.4 percent live in households with incomes below the National poverty line of 137,430 naira per year based on the 2019 exchange rate.
Kamfut further expressed optimism that the dialogue would yield positive outcome and improve budgeting and funding of child responsive interventions which would alleviate poverty, as it is a major barrier to realising the rights of all children. Besides, it would help to achieve many targets of the Sustainable Development Goals including ending preventable child deaths, ensuring quality basic education for all children and protecting children from all forms of violence, if concerted efforts are made.
On his part, Gov Mohammed Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe state, represented by his deputy, Dr Manassah Daniel jatau said although the dialogue was about children but the challenge lies on leaders to change the narratives because children are not in the position to prepare budget for themselves.
He advocate for increased public allocations and expenditures on child sensitive sectors as well as creation of budget code for social protection in the budget at all levels which he said must be linked to ministries, departments and agencies.
He further explained that although this is a daunting task due to troubled economy but they have no option because children are the foundation of adults.
He said there is no organisation without challenges but the ability to overcome those challenges differentiate an effective leader from an ineffective one. He stressed that the dialogue came at a right time when state governments were at the verge of preparing budgets in their various states for the forthcoming financial year.
Presentations and panel discussions
So many submissions, presentations and data analysis were presented by experts at the workshop to acquint the participants with the sectors performance in all the six states in the region, the enormity of the challenges in each sectors and what need to be done to change those narratives and guarantee children development/survival.
Presenting a paper on the state of children and women indicators in Adamawa, Taraba, Bauchi, Gombe, Borno and Yobe, UNICEF social policy specialist, Dr Auta explained that the North east has contributed 40% of out-of-school children in Nigeria, hence the need for all hands to be on deck to change the statistics.
He further noted that when there is adequate budget for education, health, nutrition, water and sanitation, among others, one can say one has a child-sensitive budget. According to him, the issues surrounding children is top on SDGS and UNICEF would continue to engage with government and other stakeholders to ensure that the goals are achieved.
On his part UNICEF Commitments Officer, Bauchi Field Office, Mr Opeyemi Olagunju, who coordinated the discussions panels reiterated the commitments of UNICEF to take a lead in championing the cause of children and women at all times.
Opeyemi further noted that UNICEF is always ready to support any initiatives that would increase access for women and children to have descent life in line with relevant conventions noting that it would continue to collaborate with the six states to ensure social budgeting for child sensitive sectors and better public funds investments on children.
He pointed out that in Gombe, for instance, UNICEF supported the establishment of economic intelligence unit in the Ministry of Budget and Planning to support issues around children.
The meeting also broke into panel discussions where experts, commissioners and other stakeholders answered so many questions raised at the workshop on the way forward for the region and what their various states governments were doing to tackle the challenges of child poverty, malnutrition, out of school children syndrome among many other children- related issues in their various states and their future plans for child sensitive sectors.
The panelists while responding to issues raised at the dialogue advocated for domestication and strengthening of social protection policy which they believed would go a long way to reduce child abuses and neglect. They also opined that if child sensitive sectors are adequately captured in the budget and allocations properly released, it would go a long way to reduce the challenges of insecurity in the North-east as well as child labour and Almajiri syndrome. They further called on governors from the region to accept initiatives on children-related issues from relevant government ministries, departments and agencies towards improving the wellbeing of children. They stressed that every agency has a role to play in the life of a child towards the development and survival.
Decisions, challenges and recommendations
It was observed that although budgetary allocations to social sectors have increased in most states of the region at some point, but fluctuated at other points according to budget trend analysis of 2024 though some states budgeting closed to UN benchmark but the current funding for social sectors in the zone has proven to be grossly inadequate especially with the ever increasing social needs for children and women in key sectors of education, health, social protection, Nutrition and WASH.
Other challenges identified includes high mortality rate especially in new born and still-born due to factors such as human resources gaps, low investments and funding, burden of malnutrition, severe child poverty, low iron and folic acid supplementation and increasing household poverty, challenges with data management which led to poor planning and ineffective service delivery, prevailing economic situation in the country which further compounded poverty level especially among women and children, high rate of out- of-school children and low learning outcomes in the region.
To tackle these challenges headlong, the stakeholders agreed that state governments in the region should make a commitments by increasing budgetary allocations and releases by at least 2% annually to the social sectors, increase investments in human resources for health and upgrade health facilities, invest in nutrition through matching fund for nutrition funding, strengthening of the state Bureau for statistics, EMIS offices and National Health demographic survey (NDHIS).
