Abia Government has expressed its readiness to pay a $200,000-dollar counterpart fund and fulfil other obligations required for the state to benefit from the newly approved World Bank Health Security Programme and other support packages.
Gov. Alex Otti stated this on Thursday during a meeting with the World Bank Public Health Finance Team under the Federal Government’s HOPE Programme, in Nvosi, Isiala Ngwa South Local Government Area.
The governor thanked the World Bank delegation for its interest in supporting the state’s development agenda, noting that the achievements recorded by his administration were in line with promises made to the people.
He said the progress was not aimed at attracting applause but at delivering good governance.
Otti said that his administration’s consistent allocation of a large portion of the annual budget to the health and education sectors was deliberate.
“We see health and education as top priorities, and all the retrofitted primary healthcare centres are equipped in line with minimum acceptable standards,” he said.
On education, Otti said that the government had recruited over 5,300 teachers, with plans to employ an additional 4,000, while also increasing the retirement age for teachers from 60 to 65 years.
He expressed satisfaction that the state’s reforms aligned with the World Bank’s development framework.
The governor, however, expressed concern that some residents still patronised traditional caregivers in spite of the presence of well-equipped health facilities in communities across the state.
Otti said that the state government’s major challenge was to reorient the people and rebuild public confidence in government-owned health institutions.
In his speech, the Team Lead and Senior Health Specialist with the bank, Dr Okunola Olamide, said that the delegation was in Abia on a public financial management mission relating to health service delivery.
Olamide said that Abia was selected as one of the states to visit because of its high level of investment in basic healthcare, education and other critical sectors.
He said that the team was impressed by the quality of work carried out in some primary healthcare centres and other health projects executed by the state government.
He also commended the present administration for recruiting health workers and improving their remuneration to make the sector more attractive.
Olamide described Abia as a model for other states, noting that education and health had received the highest budgetary allocations in the state for three consecutive years.
Also speaking, another Senior Health Specialist with the World Bank, Dr Chijioke Okoro, said that available data showed that only about five to six states in the country had a budget structure favourable to human capital development.
Okoro commended Abia Government for allocating 95 per cent of its budget to soft capital, including infrastructure, health, education and social protection.
He announced that the Federal Ministry of Finance had listed Abia among the few states to benefit from the newly approved $250 million U.S. dollars World Bank grant for health security in West and Central Africa.
Earlier, the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Multilateral and Donor Agencies, Mr Odinakachi Eme, said that the delegation was in the state for the HOPE Project and Health Security Programmes.
Eme explained that the HOPE Project covered three sectors, namely governance, health and education.
According to him, its mission was to assess bottlenecks in planning, budgeting and budget execution, with a view to generating evidence-based recommendations to strengthen the sector and improve service delivery.
