The Save the Children International (SCI) on Wednesday advocated for increased citizens’ inputs in Kaduna State and the local government councils’ 2022 health budget, through the Community Development Charter (CDC).

The Advocacy and Campaign Assistant, SCI, Ms. Amabel Olukotun, made the call in Kaduna, at a one-day capacity strengthening to increase community inputs into the health budget at state and local government levels.

Olukotun said the state government had in 2017 signed the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and made a commitment to increase citizens’ participation in the entire budget cycle.

She said that the government further adopted the CDC initiative to enable citizens to directly inform and influence the budget process.

She added that the training was designed to increase participants’ understanding of the CDC process and how it can inform the Health Sector Annual Operational Plan (AOP).

She said that the objective of the training was also to leverage the OGP, to ensure a link between the CDC process with the health sector AOP.

This, according to her, will, in turn, inform the health sector’s annual budget at the state and local government levels.

“What this means is that health-related needs of communities collated through the CDC will be extracted and included in the state and local government’s health sector AOP, which will, in turn, inform the budgets.

“This will further empower community accountability actors to engage in budget advocacy to improve prioritization of human capital development at the local government level.

“We believe that to get the best result, we need to start from the grassroots as part of efforts to strengthen the health system, including health financing.

“The training, will, therefore, strengthen community accountability mechanisms to advocate for timely and sufficient health-related budget release and cash-backing in the state, ”she said.

The National Daily reports that participants include: Community Engagement Officers of the State Primary Health Care Development Board (SPHCDB), CDC Champions, and Deputy Directors Planning from SPHCDB and the Ministry for Local Government.

The Advocacy and Communication Coordinator, SCI, Mr. Farouk Abdulkadir, said the engagement would strengthen synergy among government officials, CDC champions, and Ward Development Committees.

He said, “It is expected that the Community Engagement Officers and the CDC champions would step down the training to the WDC and CDC champions at the wards level for all to be on the same page.”

Also speaking, Mr. Yusuf Goje, of the Coalition of Association of Leadership Peace Empowerment and Development, said that citizens’ engagement in the budget process would improve access to health services.