Revised budget: Cutting health, UBE votes shameful – CACOL

The Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership has said it was unfortunate that Nigeria, which is the poverty capital of the world, would relegate the health and education sectors.

CACOL Executive Chairman, Debo Adeniran, said Nigeria had one of the highest maternal and mortality rates in the world as well as out of school children and the government ought to give priority to health and education.

He said, “Why should we waste N27bn on building that is not showing any sign of distress? It is a misplaced priority and a total waste. The National Assembly doesn’t need repainting let alone renovation.

“Nigeria is the poverty capital in the world despite being one of the most endowed countries. It is misplaced priorities that brought us to this sorry state we found ourselves.


“Nigerians are dying from treatable and preventable diseases and the government thinks it is right to slash the health budget while maintaining the N27bn for renovation? It is a shame.”

It was gathered that the Federal Government in its proposed the revision of the 2020 budget due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

In the proposed revised budget,  while the National Assembly complex renovation budget  was reduced to  N27.7bn (a reduction of 25.1 per cent), the Basic Health Care Provision Fund, which is meant to cater for all the primary healthcare centres across the 774 local government areas in the country, was significantly reduced by N44.4bn to N25.5bn, a decrease of more than 42.5 per cent

Also, the Universal Basic Education fund was also reduced significantly from N111.7bn to N51.1bn, by more than 54.2 per cent, according to documents obtained by Dataphyte, an open data organisation.