In this age of coronavirus, the hardest hit people in terms of food and money are vulnerable, especially the street beggars, and people living with disabilities, and the physically challenged in society. In order to fill this void, individuals, corporate organisations began to voluntarily feed these vulnerable people, and this was to complement the government’s effort in the fight against coronavirus.
Having these people on the street looking for food would have posed a risk to their health and caused a big spread of the virus in different communities. It is important to note that this corporate social responsibility saved lives from the ‘hunger virus’. Suffice to say it will be most disheartening to see anyone collect the little meal a disabled has in this period.
It said that with quality education, poverty can be eradicated in a society. For a country regarded as the poverty capital of the world and with a high rate of out-of-school children, the education sector is in dire need of adequate financing and not budget cuts by an alarming 54.25% (from N111.7bn down to N51.1bn). One of the reasons the Academic Staff union of Universities (ASUU) has gone on yet another strike is the inadequate funding of the educational sector in Nigeria, which has inadvertently made it a disabled sector.
It is curious to note that the Federal Government still allocated a whooping N9bn bogus budget for the renovation of the National Assembly, despite the public outrage with greeted the announcement of N37bn initially earmarked for its renovation. For a building with no sign of distress, it should be seen as sheer waste of limited funds. The allocation for constituency project remained untouched, set at N100bn, which has little or no impact to the masses in the country, whereas the education budget which gets the least allocation yearly in every budget is now being further reduced to mere peanuts.
Education has far more capacity to touch lives than a building accommodating 469 legislators.
Investing in the Universal Basic Education in this period cannot be overemphasised. It has been predicted that one of the fallouts of the Post-COVID era will be an increase in out-of-school children, mainly due to the inability of parents to pay fees. The reduction in its budget will definitely affect the goal of the UBE by providing free and compulsory education to every child.
There is an urgent need to take children out of the streets as they are subjects to rape, harm and even recruited for robbery and also by terrorists. There is also a need to develop strategies to maintain schools, Federal Government colleges, and this cannot be done without a strong political will, as many schools are a shadow of their old self, which the government acquired from the missionary schools.
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In a time where initial budgeting appropriations differ from the eventual allocation due to Single Treasury Account, further reduction of this critical sector will cause more burden on the stretched education system.
The revised budget also saw cuts in the budget of the health sector. In a time of health crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, this is surely ill-advised. The Basic Health Care budget saw a cut of about 42.5% (from N44.4bn to N25.5bn). During the lockdown, very many avoided going to hospitals, and reports also had it how public hospitals refused patients for fear of contracting the virus due to the scarce Personal Protective Equipment but who did not have the virus.
Maternal Mortality has always been a problem in the health sector and this is the time to improve the standard of Primary Health Care Centres around the country as they are even the closest to the public and to pregnant women. On a large scale, we have always had a mass exodus of doctors seeking better welfare and health infrastructure to greener pastures.
The brain drain is the most talked about topic in the health sector, and rather than reducing funding, this should be the time to transform the sector by making the brain drain a brain gain, as this is what Nigeria needs to fully beat the virus. Surely, even state governments have a big role to play by motivating frontline workers financially. Due to the pandemic, most government officials have found it impossible to travel for health tourism due to the flight ban.
This certainly shows the standard of healthcare left for the public to contend with. This is the time to change the narrative by stopping all forms of medical tourism.
Of course, due to dwindling oil prices, most sectors in the economy are bound to take cuts, but the government can compensate critical sectors in emergency which are the education and health sectors by cutting frivolous spending, as well as the expedient implementation of the Oronsaye report.
Comparing budget cuts, the National Assembly budget was cut by a mere 10% when compared to that of the education and health sector. This is why it is disheartening that these two critical sectors which are almost in a disabled state allocated paltry sums when compared to other sectors in the budget. It is seemingly not too late to tide.
Investing in the Nigerians can only happen if living conditions, quality education, health care and infrastructure exist, as this would even directly and indirectly create the targeted number of jobs set by this Federal government.
and then