2025 Budget: Snakes, termites, monkeys must not swallow $1.07 billion earmarked for health, Atiku warns

Former Vice President of Nigeria Atiku Abubakar has warned that claims of animals such as snakes, termites, gorillas and monkeys swallowing public funds must never be the fate of the funds budgeted for the critical sector of health in the 2025 Budget.

In recent years, there have been bizarre claims of animals being held accountable for missing public funds. Some of these fairytale-like claims were never investigated or punished to deter future offenders.

Against the backdrop of dwindling resources that has been exacerbated by the withdrawal of support in certain areas of our healthcare services, it is important that every kobo budgeted for the health sector has to be maximally utilised.

To this end, the Federal Government has to be deliberate about putting mechanisms in place for public audit and accountability in its US$1.07 billion budgetary appropriation in the health sector.

The former Vice President specifically queries the Federal Government for not providing comprehensive information on how it plans to expend the over one billion dollars in the primary health sector.

Atiku noted that while healthcare, especially the primary sector deserves rapid investment in order to promote access to quality and affordable health services to Nigerians, it will be immoral of the government not to provide extensive details of how the money allotted for the purpose would be dispensed.

“We have read that the Federal Government has a plan to expend a whooping sum of $1.07 billion in the primary health sector. This amount is in addition to the N2.48 trillion, which had earlier been proposed for the health sector in the initial draft of the budget.

“This development gets even more troubling when the government equally announced that the $1.07 billion it is adding to the health sector at the sub-national level was mainly sourced through foreign loans and a fraction of it being provided through an international donor agency.

“In other words, Nigeria is expected to pay these loans back and it is required that the Nigerian people know the details of these loans and that its expenditure must be conveyed in a policy envelop that will explain how it will be spent,” Atiku noted.

He says further that the failure of the Federal Government not to commit to a single physical infrastructure in expending the budgetary provision smacks of fraud.

According to the government, “the funds will be directed towards improving governance in healthcare and enhancing primary healthcare services nationwide. This financing will support recruitment, training, and retention of healthcare workers and teachers at the sub-national level…”

For an administration that has been known to have a deficiency of trust in the administration of its humanitarian services, Nigerians cannot take the risk of accepting a shoddy explanation on a budgetary provision that lacks a mechanism of tracking how the money is to be expended.

It is difficult for Nigerians to believe this current Federal Government given its proclivity to alternative truths – especially on their claims about investments in the social infrastructure.

It is worrisome that the Tinubu administration continues to lie to Nigerians on the status of our tertiary hospitals when the sorry state of those hospitals lay bare for Nigerians to see.

Just recently, the government began a campaign of improvements in the standard of our tertiary health institutions, but Nigerians know that these teaching hospitals often lack basic amenities such as access to a steady supply of electricity.

Undoubtedly, the Tinubu administration has failed woefully in the health sector because of the poor funding of the sector.

The major diseases in the primary health sector remain malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS treatment.

If President Tinubu’s administration meant well in its claim to prioritize the health of Nigerians, his government should explain how it plans to spend this intervention fund in addressing these diseases in the primary health sector.

On the contrary, what the government announced in its panic response to President Donald Trump’s announcement of the cancellation of American aids for the treatment of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria was a paltry N5 billion.

If the Tinubu administration fails to provide a comprehensive framework to safeguard its purported huge investment in the health sector nor subject the appropriations to the scrutiny of the National Assembly, it may be safe to conclude that this is another episode of the administration committing a fraud in the name of public interest.