The Nigerian Government is stepping up efforts to improve healthcare delivery and nutrition financing by introducing a nutrition budget tagging system across all levels of government.
At the opening of a four-day Training of Trainers workshop in Abuja, Acting Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, Sampson Ebimaro, explained that the initiative, tagged, “Towards a National Picture: Advancing Nutrition Financing through Budget Tagging”, is designed to make resource allocation for nutrition programmes more transparent, accountable and efficient.
Representing the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Atiku Bagudu, Ebimaro stressed that although nutrition plays a critical role in public health and economic growth, policy implementation has often fallen short due to poor tracking of funds.
He said the absence of a unified system for monitoring nutrition-related spending has slowed progress, adding that budget tagging will provide a clearer picture of investments and help identify gaps that need urgent attention.
“The importance of a clear understanding of how resources are allocated and spent cannot be overemphasised in assessing the effectiveness of investments and identifying areas for improvement,” he said.
Dr. Ebimaro also noted that the Nutrition Financing Technical Committee, established in 2022, laid the foundation for the tagging framework, which he described as a transformative step toward improving the visibility of nutrition budgets across ministries, departments, and agencies.
He noted that the ongoing workshop is designed to build on previous achievements and expand the nutrition budget tagging system to states not included in the Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria (ANRiN 1.0) project. According to him, the system has already improved resource allocation and enhanced accountability in nutrition financing.
Similarly, the Director of the Ministry’s Nutrition Department, Clementina Okoro, explained that the federal government, with support from the World Bank through the ANRiN flagship project, is intensifying efforts to strengthen nutrition financing as part of broader plans to boost human capital development.
She revealed that a series of training sessions had already begun for budget officers, nutrition programme managers, and planning officers to ensure effective integration of nutrition into the national budget cycle.
While the ANRiN initiative initially focused on 11 pilot states, she explained that its nationwide scale-up would offer a more complete and coordinated picture of nutrition financing across ministries, departments, and agencies.
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