The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, has called for greater allocation of resources to areas that guarantee children’s welfare and development.
The agency stated this during a three- day training for heads of budget planning in key Ministries, Departments and Agencies, in Anambra State.
No fewer than 36 persons from the Ministries of Budget and Economic Planning, Youth Development, Women Affairs, Finance, Health, Agriculture, Education, Local Government, among others, are participating in the ongoing workshop.
A UNICEF Consultant and resource person at the workshop, Dr Sola Omoju, said during the opening ceremony in Awka, that as a very important development partner to Nigeria at both the state and federal levels, the world body has been working within the context of the United Nations to provide support on issues concerning children.
“In Nigeria, we are intervening in the areas of education, health, nutrition, sanitation and hygiene, as well as in child social protection. The reason is that UNICEF wants children to develop in a good environment.
“UNICEF is supporting the empowerment of those planning budgets that touch the children to link up with how they are spending money on the key areas in the state’s annual expenditures”, Omoju said.
He added that: “UNICEF is so passionate about the children, hence the need to provide the support, so that in the next three years, for instance, the affected states should be linking their resources to the UNICEF focus areas that are of particular interest to the children.
“One of the things we want to do is to build the capacity of the civil servants involved in planning and budget, so that they will see the need to allocate adequate resources to the relevant areas.
“UNICEF is not trying to force figures on the states, but to build the capacity of the civil servants as we believe that in few years to come, the impact of this capacity building will be felt in Anambra State to the benefit of their MDAs.”
The workshop featured technical sessions on: understanding the principles and components of Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and the Medium-Term Sector Strategy (MTEF/MTSS) and overview of the process in budgeting.
