Governor Nasir
El-Rufai has said the assessment of Mr. Bill Gate, the founder of Microsoft
Corporation, about President Muhammadu Buhari’s Economic Policy is not
correct.
Mr. Gates
had faulted President Buhari’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP),
stating the plan does not have the ability to address the unique needs of
Nigerians at present.
He added
that the execution priorities of the plan do not fully reflect people’s needs,
instead, it prioritizes physical capital over human capital.
But the
Kaduna state governor in an interview with the journalist at the statehouse
after the session said it is not correct to say that the economic plan does not
give primacy to human capital.
“It is not
correct to say that the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan does not give primacy
to human capital, it is not correct.
“The plan
has enough provision for human capital, it is a Federal Government’s plan. What
is needed is for states to have similar plans as well as adequate provisions
for healthcare and education because the bulk of the burden for healthcare and
education really rests on states government.
“The disease
burden of the country is largely at the primary healthcare level and this
primary healthcare system is broken completely. We need to rebuild it.
“The United
Nations recommends that we should budget at least 26 percent of our total
budget on education, many state governments are doing that or near that.
“Kaduna
State has done averagely 35 percent in the last two years. The World Health
Organisation recommends that we budget at least 16 percent of total budget on
healthcare, some of our states are doing 12 and 16 percent and so on.
“Kaduna is
doing 16.1 percent, we moved three percent in 2016 to 16 percent today. So, the
states’ government are scaling up their investments in healthcare but we need
to do more.
“This is the
message of Gates and Dangote, we need to do much more at the sub-national level
“It is not
the ERGP that needs adjustments, it is the budgeting that needs to be ramped up
in these two key areas because these are where the problems are.
“If a child
losses equality education, he is done for life. If a child doesn’t get quality
healthcare in the first two years, he is destroyed for life. This is the
message that we invest more at the lower level, so that we prevent this
disaster from happening.”
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