Key officials in Ebonyi Local Government system have been urged to intensify actions towards securing release of budgeted funds for nutrition, adolescent and youth friendly health services in their domains.
The task was given to the local government officials by a nongovernmental organisation, Women Friendly Initiative.
It did this in alliance with its Ebonyi State cluster member organisation, Civil Resource Development and Documentation Centre, Nigeria during a one-day stakeholders meeting in the state.
The organisation 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 five states in Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
The activity is supported under the USAID-palladium’s Strengthening Civic Advocacy and Local Engagement project.
The organisations 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 N1 million in 2023 to N20 million for both sub-sectors, that of Ezza South rose from N1 million to over N4.5 million and N5 million 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 organisations expressed dismay that most of the provided funds in the two local government areas have not been accessed for improved services in the two sub-sectors.
They tasked the concerned officials to do the needful so as to guarantee the health and wellbeing of Ebonyi State children, mothers and adolescents.
The group decried the magnitude of malnutrition in the state, adding that the most affected groups were children between the ages of six and 59 months, nursing mothers and under five children.
Speaking to newsmen, the Programme Manager with the Women Friendly Initiative, Paul Aondofa Uche, who also represented the Executive Director, 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.
He said 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 some 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.”
The Monitoring and Evaluation officer for WFI, Rosemary Adejo, said 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 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 undertaking to vigorously pursue the release of the funds so as to meet the goals of the project before the next quarter.
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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 organisations for their concerns, assuring that his administration was following after the step of Governor Francis Nwifuru, who has given priority to issues bordering on health and wellbeing of Ebonyi State 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.”
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