Stakeholders Advocate Training Of MDA’s On Gender Responsive Budgeting

Stakeholders at a five-day training on Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting have stressed the need for the Federal Government to build the capacity of MDA’s to develop plans that are gender responsive.

This training organized by Plan International Nigeria with funding from Global Affairs Canada Nigeria was to equip stakeholders with key knowledge on the concepts on gender equality and inclusion in the health sector, identify gender gaps in past budgets, and strengthen their capacity to develop gender and adolescent-responsive and inclusive budget for their states

The stakeholders which comprises of federal and state government officials ,development partners and plan International Nigeria also seek advocacy and enlightenment campaigns in gender responsive budgeting at all levels of government.

Addressing participants in Abuja, a Deputy Director, Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, Mrs. Grace Obi- Ukpabi, urged all stakeholders to reflect gender responsive plans in their annual budgeting.

The country Director, Plan International Nigeria, Dr Charles Usie noted that the Gender responsive Budgeting training was to ensure all Nigerians benefit from the National budget and planning.

”Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting is important because the budget is the most important economic instrument that is used to transform the lives of any population, in Nigeria ,our budget is our most important document that actually tells or reveals intents or how government choses to spend our collective resources.”

”In that sense it means that everybody is a party to this budget, everybody should benefit from this budget, what we found out overtime is that certain groups of the population do not enjoy from this budget, which suppose to be a collective package for all of us, and those that do not really benefit from this budget are mostly women and girls and particularly people living with some forms of disability and that is a problem for us.” he added

Also speaking the Chief Gender Officer, Africa Development Bank AFDB, Dr Maria Jose said the is also supporting Nigeria to address gender gaps, in job creation and access to capacity building.

The Deputy Director Ministry Of Education, HIV/AIDS Department, Mrs Njideka Ogbuike, noted that some girls miss school due to inadequate provision of proper WASH facility during their menstrual cycle.

”They skip school because of menstruation and this affects their performance, the Ministry has gone a long way to put in place WASH facilities in the schools, we collaborate with NGOs to ensure some of this issues are addressed and to encourage young girls to go to school.”

According to the Deputy Director, ”In the area of budgeting, Institutionalizing the issues concerning gender is something that has become an intentional thing in the ministry, in terms of curriculum, policy.”

She noted that the National Policy on health is being reviewed and government was intentional about addressing gender issues, disparity in terms of accessing information so that girls can have a desk where they can access information about their reproductive health.

”When all these girls will want to stay in school. So federal Ministry of education is very intentional about ensuring that the school environment is very sensitive to gender, before the issue of menstrual hygiene was discussed in closed circuit, but now when we want to discuss about the topic we ensure that both the boy and the girl child are present.”