By Abdulwaheed Olayinka Adubi,
Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, has condemned Nigeria’s low budgetary allocation for health care in the country.
The Presidential hopeful described as low, the budget for health and education when he appeared at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Highlighting his plans for Nigeria if elected President, Obi said N3.5 trillion for health in a country like Nigeria was too low.
According to Obi, in the past five years from 2015 to 2021, Nigeria’s budget health has been under N2.5 trillion for 200 million people.
He explained further that, even in the recent budget, health received about N1.5 trillion while the budget for education is about N2 trillion, making a combined annual budget of about N3.5 trillion for both sectors considered as two of the most important.
Obi said, “In the past 5 years, from 2015 to 2021, Nigeria’s budget in health has been under N2.5 trillion for 200 million people. It is unacceptable. Even this year, our budget for health is about N1.5 trillion, budget for education is about N2 trillion. Two of them combined annual budget is about N3.5 trillion when your six-month budget for subsidy – which is criminality – is N3.6 trillion, it is unacceptable.”
He added that there is a need to keep money in key development areas because what separates rich and poor countries is health and education.
Speaking on how to achieve this, Obi said he would borrow a leaf from countries whose health policies have worked for them.
He said: “In terms of how to cover it, nations of the world have covered it. How did India with 1.4 billion people cover the issue of health? How did Indonesia cover that? We have big nations that have done it well. If we don’t know how to do it, we will learn from them. There is nothing wrong with learning if you don’t know how to do it.”
Speaking on how to deal with legislators considering that the Labour party would not be in control of the legislative arm, if it wins, Obi stated that doing things the right way would enable his government resolve the logjam.
He said: “quite frankly, I have been through this as a governor. When I was elected and sworn in as a governor, I had 30 house members, not from my party. In fact, nobody from my party was involved. As long as you are pursuing what is right, everybody will go with you because the legislature is secured in its place.
“It becomes a problem when you are pursuing transactional policies which will benefit you or you are engaging in nepotism. But if you address it by seeking from the constitution which spells out that the system is characterized simply and that we have diversity and all is included, you did the right thing. You don’t need to worry about that.”
