Health
Children in crisis invisible in Nigeria’s budgets – Report
Solomon Odeniyi
A new report on Early Childhood Development in Crisis has revealed that Nigerian children aged between zero and eight years living in humanitarian settings remain “fiscally invisible”.
The report by Moving Minds Alliance warned that the absence of dedicated budgetary allocations is undermining the country’s future workforce and economic development.
The findings were presented on Wednesday in Abuja during the inauguration of the Reporters for Early-age Children in Humanitarian Crisis Network in Nigeria.
“Early Childhood Development in Crisis does not appear as a single dedicated budget line in any federal or state budget. Children aged 0–8 in crisis settings are fiscally invisible, ” it partly read.
The report identified five major barriers responsible for the financing gap, including the absence of dedicated budget lines for children aged zero to eight, weak budget implementation, fragmented financing, recurrent-heavy spending and inequitable distribution of humanitarian resources.
The report also proposed seven reforms, including the creation of a federal policy framework for ECDiC, dedicated budget tags, protected budget releases, simplified funding mechanisms, results-based financing, equitable allocation of resources and a joint investment architecture involving government, donors and philanthropists.
Speaking at the event, Nigeria Early Childhood Development in Crisis Coalition Coordinator, Arome Agenyi, warned that failing to prioritise early childhood development could jeopardise Nigeria’s future labour force and economic growth.
“If we don’t prioritise early childhood development in Nigeria, we risk having a country whose labour force will be in jeopardy. This is going to have an overriding effect on the private sector, our national life and our economy,” Agenyi said.
He stressed that scientific evidence showed that a child’s brain develops most rapidly between birth and the age of five.
“The most important and critical time in a man’s life is between zero and five years. If we fail to develop children during this period, we have lost a critical part of our national life,” he said.
He also highlighted the funding imbalance in the education sector.
“Currently, 70 to 80 per cent of the education budget is used to pay salaries and overhead costs, while only about five per cent is allocated to early childhood development. There is a huge gap in budgeting for early childhood development,” he said.
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He cautioned that inadequate investment in early childhood development would negatively affect education, healthcare, social protection and long-term economic productivity.
Also speaking, the Global Co-Chair of the REACH Network, Mojeed Alabi, said Nigeria could no longer afford to ignore the plight of children affected by conflicts, flooding, climate change and other humanitarian crises.
“Whether you look at the crisis of Boko Haram, the crisis of banditry, the crisis of flooding or the climate crisis, Nigeria is not an exception in terms of crisis.
“We are mobilising support for people to consider the fate of children in humanitarian crisis, not necessarily looking at the North-East, North-West or North-Central. We are looking at Nigeria as a whole because everywhere you look, there is one crisis or the other,” he said.
Alabi lamented that despite the growing humanitarian challenges, early childhood development remained neglected in government policies and funding priorities.
“You realise that in budgeting, in financing, early childhood development is not really supported by our actions, our activities or the policies of government. We think the media has a fundamental role to play in calling the attention of critical stakeholders,” he said.
According to him, the newly launched REACH Network would leverage the media’s influence to shape public policy and improve reporting on children affected by humanitarian crises.
“The media has a capacity that has been underutilised. The media has the opportunity to talk to policymakers and also see what our people can do in terms of benefiting from government policies. That is what we are going to be seeing from now on,” Alabi said.
The Strategic Communications Lead of the Moving Minds Alliance, Lola Ayanda, described journalists as strategic partners rather than mere public relations channels.
“Usually, development partners treat media as PR. We feel the media is very strategic to our work. The media needs to be at the centre of it, driving the policy conversation, the financial conversation and the campaigns we are trying to build in Nigeria.
“For us, media are strategic partners for this work, and this is just the beginning of something great,” he said.
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