The Federal Government has urged state governments to align their budgets with development plans and sector priorities to improve the delivery of basic education and primary healthcare services.
The Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, Deborah Odoh, said credible budgeting must reflect government priorities and planned activities, stressing that public resources must be properly managed to deliver better outcomes for Nigerians.
The government official spoke on Monday in Abuja following an alarm raised by the Universal Basic Education Commission that about 70 per cent of Nigerian children of primary school age cannot read and understand a simple text, blaming persistent learning challenges on weaknesses in education delivery and the management of public resources.
Odoh spoke at a technical capacity-building workshop on Disbursement-Linked Indicator 2 of the Human Capital Opportunities for Prosperity and Equity Governance Programme, known as HOPE-GOV.
She said the 2027 budget process presented an opportunity for states to strengthen the link between their development plans, sector policies, annual operational plans and budgets.
“A fundamental principle underlying DLI 2 is that budgeting must not be undertaken in isolation from planning. A credible budget should be the financial expression of government priorities and the activities intended to achieve them,” she said.
Odoh explained that the workshop was designed to help participating states review their plans, workplans, budgets and available resources to identify gaps and improve implementation.
She said the exercise would examine how government priorities were costed and reflected in budgets, how expenditure was classified using the National Chart of Accounts, and how planned activities could be reconciled with available resources and budget ceilings.
“The objective is not for the Federal Government or technical experts to prepare State budgets. Rather, it is to strengthen the capacity of State institutions to undertake this process effectively within their own systems,” she said.
The permanent secretary urged state officials to work together across budget, planning, education and healthcare institutions, noting that the challenges could not be resolved by individual agencies acting alone.
She added that the workshop would examine how states cost their priorities, reflect them in budgets and reconcile planned expenditure with available resources and budget ceilings.
“I therefore encourage every State team to leave this workshop with clear action points, assigned responsibilities and realistic timelines for implementation.
“Ultimately, the measure of success will not be the number of presentations delivered or sessions completed. It will be whether we have helped States establish a clearer, more coherent and more credible pathway from sector priorities to workplans, from workplans to budgets, and from budgets to effective implementation,” she said.
The National Coordinator of HOPE-GOV, Dr Assad Hassan, said the programme was focused on strengthening the systems through which public resources were converted into services and measurable outcomes.
“We are here to move from plans to priorities, from priorities to budgets, and from budgets to results.
“We cannot achieve meaningful improvements in basic education and primary health care by simply increasing expenditure. We must improve the quality of the planning, budgeting, execution, and also the accountability systems through which public resources are converted into services and outcomes. Our task is to close the gap between planning and budgeting,” Hassan said.
He said the workshop would help states improve the costing of projects, apply the National Chart of Accounts and align sector workplans with available resources.
Other areas of focus include project prioritisation, costing, mapping and geo-tagging, as well as reconciling sector plans with available fiscal resources.
Earlier in her address, the Director of Teacher Professional Development at the Universal Basic Education Commission, Maryam Sani Dangaji, said about 70 per cent of Nigerian children of primary school age could not read and understand a simple text.
She also disclosed that, as of August 2026, more than N65bn in counterpart funding remained unaccessed, while about N267bn in released intervention funds was yet to be used.
“About 70 per cent of Nigerian children of primary school age cannot read and understand a simple text. This learning poverty is the reason we are gathered here. Our goal at UBEC is clear: every child in school, and every child learning.
“Spending more will not achieve this by itself; we must spend better,” Dangaji said, calling on states to improve accountability and ensure that education spending translates into better learning outcomes.
She said UBEC had revamped its Basic Education Action Plan, introduced a digital system to track plans and funding, revised its intervention fund guidelines and developed a 10-year strategic roadmap covering 2026 to 2035.
Meanwhile, the National Project Coordinator of HOPE-EDU, Dr Layi Olatunwura, said estimates of Nigeria’s out-of-school children ranged from 12 million to 17 million, depending on the data source, with at least six million girls among them.
He said the programme aimed to reach 29 million children over four years, provide non-formal education to another 1.5 million children and support 500,000 public school teachers across 65,000 schools.
The HOPE-PHC National Coordinator, Muntaqa Umar-Sadiq, said weak coordination, fragmented data and governance challenges had affected healthcare delivery, adding that states must ensure health priorities were reflected in budgets and that allocated funds were released and spent.
The National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, Muyi Aina, represented by HOPE-PHC focal person Onesirosan Omawumi Daibo, said N77.7bn had been disbursed through the Basic Health Care Provision Fund to 8,309 primary healthcare facilities across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
The HOPE programme, supported by the World Bank, seeks to strengthen governance and improve the delivery of basic education and primary healthcare. Officials said effective planning, budget execution and accountability are essential to ensuring public spending delivers tangible benefits for citizens.
The workshop is designed to help states align their development plans, sector work plans and budgets, particularly for basic education and primary healthcare, ahead of the 2027 budget cycle and beyond.