By Hassan Zaggi
The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, has disclosed that the federal government is making arrangement to close the funding gap for Family Planning (FP) commodities and ensure that the gains achieved the previous years are not lost.
Responding to questions at a media briefing in Abuja, yesterday, the Minister revealed that the federal government could not pay the agreed four million dollars counterpart funding for Family Planning commodities in 2022 due to high expenditure and dwindling revenue of the federal government which was occasioned by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Osagie said that his ministry received an offer from a partner for dormant funds which it can use to fund any programme of its choice.
His ministry, he said, opted to use the funds for Family Planning commodities.
He explained that: “Nigeria has a compact-which is like an agreement with the United Nation Population Fund (UNFPA) to provide money every year for family planning commodities and we agreed it is going to be 4 million dollars from Nigeria and whatever the balance is, all the other partners will put money and pay.
“That has been going on until last (2022) due to all the expenses of COVID-19 and because of the low revenue that government had, we could not immediately meet some of our obligations, some were delayed and therefore, we started looking around at how we can address that problem so that family planning does not fall between the cracks and we don’t loose all the gains.
“We saw that one of our partners put money on the table and they said that we can use but we have to apply to them first and tell them what we want to do with it.
“We wrote to these partners and said yes, we are working not having too interruption in our family planning agenda and therefore, we are looking for 4 million dollars to pay what is supposed to be our counterpart fund for commodities for FP, can we use out of the money?.
“We wrote a letter to them, we are still waiting for reply. We don’t have response yet.”
The Minister disclosed that if the fund is approved, the partner will transfer same directly to the account of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for the provision of the Family Planning commodities to cover the gap for the year 2022.
He, however, revealed that there is provision for the procurement of Family Planning Commodities in the health budget of 2023.
“But if they say yes, we can now ask that partner to please transfer four million dollars to the account of UNFPA.
“The money is not coming to the Ministry of Health, but will be transferred on behalf of the federal government of Nigeria so that there is no gap.
“But for the year 2023, there is provision for FP commodities in the budget for the government to pay.
“But because we do not have for 2022, due to the heavy expenses and reduced revenue we were lucky to find this partner who has this money on the table and told us we can propose what we want to use it for and we felt that is the immediate need so that we don’t have too much interruption in FP activities. “So, we have applied to take this money, exactly the 4 million dollars required of us and for them to transfer so that we can say that Nigeria has paid,” Osagie explained.
