By Hassan Zaggi
The President of Sierra Leone, Julius Maada Bio, has been advised to appoint a substantive Auditor General in order to ensure accountability and transparency in government business in the country.
A renowned activist in Sierra Leone, Juliet Andason, made the call in an interview with our Correspondent in Abuja, Nigeria.
Mrs Adanson is in Nigeria for a 3-day Africa Regional Advocacy Summit for NGOs and the Media in Abuja.
The Summit was organized by the Africa Health Budget Network (AHBN) with funding from Ford Foundation.
The Summit which was attended by 8 African countries including Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Uganda, and Zimbabwe was with the theme: Capacity Building, Peer Learning and Exchange on Accountability for Domestic Resource Mobilization for Health Security and Systems in Africa.
The Activist explained that: “The former Auditor General was removed for over two years now. She is facing a tribunal and that tribunal has gone up to two years. We don’t know what is happening. They have not called her again to the tribunal and still not reinstated and there is still no substantive Auditor General.
“For budget credibility, social accountability and judicious use of our resources, we need a person in that office that will oversee the utilization of all allocations given by the government.
“We need a person who will oversee all allocations given to all agencies.”
While lamenting that the lack of a substantive Auditor General is already affecting the running of government in terms of transparency and accountability in the country, Mrs Andason said: “I appeal to the president to appoint a substantive auditor General so that the resources allocated by the government will be fully accounted for and not drained through leakages and wastages. If we get a sitting auditor general, I know our resources will be properly managed.”
She noted that the CSOs have made efforts to ensure either the reinstatement of the former or appointment of a new substantive Auditor General through the media, but to no avail.
While commending AHBN for organizing the Summit, she said: “These few days have been very insightful and educative. Tackling health security is not the responsibility of government alone. It is a collective efforts of everybody including the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs).
“The Covid-19 emergency has been lifted even though WHO is yet to declare it over, it is therefore, time for us to concentrate on other health related issues.
“We need to strengthen our health security. The government and donor partners need to put in more resources to see that there is health security in our countries.”
The Activist said that even though African countries are resilient with the ability to overcome disease outbreaks, she, however, insisted that: “Now is time for us to put our health security in place so that when there is another outbreak(s), as usual, we will be able to overcome them with less stress.”
On his part, the Programme Manager, Health Sector Reform Foundation (HERFON), in Nigeria, Dr Opeyemi Adeosun, stressed that it is high time for the governments in the African sub region to prepare by ensuring health security of the region, as according to him, “there is epidemic after epidemic.”
He reiterated that: “It is high time the government realizes that there is pandemic after pandemic. Covid-19 has come and has reduced drastically, we need to, as a matter of urgency, start preparing and setting aside funds for another emergency.
“Apart from serious pandemics that may arise, there are epidemics here and there. There must be adequate funding to protect the people. There must be resources to do surveillance and epidemiological work and make sure people are safe from all these emergencies.”
He, therefore, advised the Nigerian government on the need to see health security as a matter of emergency.
“We have to set apart fund for health security, have an agenda to ensuring health security.
“The government should support the coordinating agency- the NCDC to have more funding on health security and the utilization of such fund should be properly monitored.
“There should be accountability. The government should do more on the issue accountability on the funds that will be released.
“There should be movement of funds from redundant areas to health security so that we can have funds to protect our people from emerging outbreaks of diseases.”
