Public finance, for every child
UNICEF has supported child-centric public financing in Nigeria through a multi-stakeholder partnership and advocacy approach
The Challenge
In Nigeria, around 70 million children face multiple deprivations due to insufficient and inefficient public spending. Over the past seven years, Nigeria's allocation of federal funds to the health and education sectors as a percentage of the overall budget has dropped1, dipping below the benchmarks set by the Abuja and Incheon declarations. The health sector funding now falls below 15% and the education sector receives less than the recommended 15-20% allocation.
Nigeria's public spending (13%) is among the lowest globally (as of 2021), with social sector receiving less than a quarter of the national budget. For every NGN 100 spent per person in Nigeria, 31 Kobo or NGN 0.31 was spent on child protection services.
One of the major hurdles in promoting public finance for children (PF4C) is the lack of transparency and accountability in budget processes, which can impact the allocation and utilization of funds for child-related interventions. Additionally, there is a dearth of evidence linking children's needs to budgetary allocations. The lack of distinct budgetary categorization for child protection services makes it challenging to monitor spending and track the flow of public resources, hampering efforts to ensure funds reach their intended recipients.
The Solution
To promote PF4C in Nigeria, UNICEF has supported governments at different levels, focusing on advocacy, technical support, multi-stakeholder partnerships and capacity building. These have included:
- To influence increased public spending in social sector programs towards children, UNICEF adopted a multi-stakeholder partnership and advocacy approach, extending beyond traditional Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). UNICEF developed 10 budget briefs that were used in the elaboration process for the 2024-2026 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) as well as engagements in the 2024 Federal budget preparation. Together with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), UNICEF developed a Business Case for advocating increased investments in child well-being. UNICEF also leveraged the technical expertise of BudgIt - a CSO specializing in federal budget analysis for child-friendly social sector budgets - to enhance its efforts in addressing child poverty across Nigeria
- Under UNICEF’s novel technical assistance approach, Technical Advisors were embedded within the Federation’s Budget Office to provide real-time data on budgetary allocations and government spending at the Federal and State levels. The embedded advisors have also helped train over 680 state officials on child and gender sensitive budgeting. The ultimate objective of the advisors is to leverage the data in building a real-time PF4C repository that would provide a snapshot of overall budgetary performance and health at the federal and subnational levels.
- In collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Budget & Economic Planning (MBEP), UNICEF conceptualized a digital policy analysis tool, enabling scenario analysis on the impact of fiscal policy reforms and public spending on child deprivations.
- In Lagos State, UNICEF provided technical support for a budget code to enable better tracking and monitoring of public expenditure for children aged 0-18 years. The initiative aims to address critical data gaps on public expenditure for children and track the extent to which children benefit from public spending. Implemented effectively, child-centric budget tagging will serve as a prelude towards migrating the State from line-item budgeting to budgeting based on performance or results. This will enable the Government to track and harmonize child-related expenditure across sectors (health, nutrition etc.) in all the MDAs that use the specific budget tag, guiding government decision-making on budgetary allocations and scale-up.
The Impact
Through sustained engagement, advocacy and technical support on PF4C, UNICEF has been able to draw the Federal Government’s attention to the Nigeria’s dire statistics on child poverty, which has led to the prioritization of Human Capital Development in the MTEF for the first time. This represents a notable achievement, highlighting the government's recognition of the importance of investing in children's wellbeing.
Moreover, in collaboration with WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF supported the Federal Ministry of Finance in drafting a National Action Plan on primary healthcare (PHC) financing in Nigeria to sustain the advocacy momentum on increasing public investments in health. The Federal Government took a timely and strategic leap forward in addressing child poverty with the inauguration of the Interministerial Network on Child Benefit for Inclusive Economic Growth in December 2023. Led by the MBEP and supported by UNICEF; the Network will serve as a hub equipped with policy simulation tools to analyze the impact of government policies on children. The Network includes governmental agencies such as the National Population Commission, and NGO partners including At-Risk Children Programme (ARC-P), Save the Children, and the Child Protection Network.
Multisectoral engagement has been key to UNICEF's work in influencing government responses to child rights issues. A practical example is the development of the Child-Wellbeing Compact by the Government of Nigeria with the assistance of UNICEF and the NESG - and as a consequence of the National Child Wellbeing Policy Debate - with sectoral input from education, health and identity management agencies.
Going forward, UNICEF will aim to institutionalise engagements with the Network of Commissioners on Budget and Finance in Nigeria, with a view to eliciting commitments to scale-up budget allocation and disbursements – towards children and child-centric programmes - at the subnational level.
