By Muhammad Amaan
The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Professor Muhammadi Ali Pate has described the Supreme Court judgment on Local Government Autonomy as a milestone in the evolution of Nigeria’s healthcare system.
The minister stated this on Monday in Abuja on the sidelines of the Inaugural Quarterly Performance Dialogue with States Commissioners of Health.
Prof. Pate said that local government autonomy was an opportunity to galvanise all levels of government to put healthcare delivery in one direction.
According to him, having all levels of government in one direction will ensure that healthcare is delivered using a ring-fenced fund.
“This fund will be managed by the state but with an agreement of the local governments to implement fully the Primary Health Care (PHC) under one roof.”
He said that in that position, the local governments are closer to the people and the states are close to the local government, while the Federal Government is close to all of the arms of government.
Going down memory lane, he said that prior to 2011, the responsibility of PHC was highly fragmented between the states and it was really a challenge as performance generally was low.
“That presentation resulted in poor performance across different elements including immunisation, maternal health outcomes, and several other things.
“To reduce the fragmentation, the National Council of Health (NCH) in 2011, approved the PHC under one roof, which accelerated the creation of State PHC delivery agencies at that time as a way to bring Federal Government, states and LGAs together.”
The minister said that not only the Federal Government, but states were key parts of the national health system and that the LG system by law was part of the system too.
“So, we are all operating in the context of cooperative federalism where all hands are on deck and our development partners have joined in that and we have raised grant resources to provide incentives to the states to contribute their counterparts.
“With this development, even LGs will be required to step up and we will measure each other’s performance and Nigerians should be able to tell which state, which LG is doing its part.”
He, however, said that the judgment was tilting the authorities towards the point where they begin to find ways to work together to govern a complex health system that has different levels of responsibility.
“So how does each level do what it needs to do and be held accountable and respond to the needs of Nigerians?
“So long as we look at ourselves as serving Nigerian people, and we behave in the right way, I think we will see that the health system will be maturing over time.”
Porf. Pate reiterated the Federal Government committed to do all it would take to see that the health of mothers, children and the most vulnerable in society continued to improve.
