Examination of Witnesses (Questions 53
- 59)
TUESDAY 7 JULY 2009
MR ABOUBACRY
AND MS
JULIA AJAYI
Q53 Chairman: Good morning and welcome;
thank you for coming to give evidence; this is the last evidence
session we are taking in this inquiry before we have the minister
in front of us next week. I wonder if, for the record, you could
just introduce yourselves, who you are and so on?
Ms Ajayi:
My name is Julia Ajayi and I am the Country Director for VSO in
Nigeria.
Mr Tall: My name is Aboubacry
Tall, I am the Regional Director for West and Central Africa for
Save the Children.
Q54 Chairman: Thank you both very
much for coming in. We visited Nigeria three weeks or so ago and
we came away—and we were not surprised to come away—realising
how important it is but also how challenging it is. Obviously
it is the most populated African country and are with some of
the worst indicators and huge regional disparities, particularly
between the North and South but also between different states.
From your take, what do you see as the biggest challenges in Northern
Nigeria for dealing with poverty reduction and delivering on the
MDGs[1]
more effectively than is the case on many of them at the moment?
We have had weak governance, we have had corruption, we have had
the impact of the oil wealth all thrown at us as part of the problem,
but in your work do you see any of those as particularly dominant
or what do you see as the biggest challenges to delivering poverty
reduction? This Committee very often asks a very simple question:
what works? To be frank, one gets the impression in Nigeria not
a lot, but maybe you will have some more positive things to say.
Who wants to go first?
Ms Ajayi: In addition to some
of the issues that you mentioned there one of the problems that
we face in Nigeria, one of the challenges, is the scale of the
country. As you mentioned, it is the most populous country in
Africa, a huge geographical area, a huge number of people and
such a range of challenges within all sectors that trying to find
a way to make an impact within that context is a real challenge
for us all working in development. Trying to find strategies that
work, in whatever level we are working in, is certainly for VSO
how we try to form our programmes, to see what works best. I do
agree that governance is an issue, and you talked about corruption
which obviously permeates different levels within the country.
Being able to take a co-ordinated response as well by looking
at working at local, state level and federal level to try and
have a joined-up, pragmatic response to creating an impact in
Nigeria is the way that we are designing our programmes and the
way that we are trying to increase the impact. Also, in terms
of trying to have joined-up working between the different agencies—we
are working closely with DFID in Nigeria, and for our volunteers
the more added value we can bring to the partners that they work
with, through making sure that the work is joined up with other
donors and agencies, then the greater the impact that we can have.
Mr Tall: Thank you, Chairman,
and thank you for giving us an opportunity today to give testimony
before this Committee. Two things: one, I would like on behalf
of Save the Children to congratulate DFID and the UK Government
for the sustained focus on the Millennium Development Goals as
the vehicle for guiding interaction with countries such as Nigeria.
In terms of what some of the main challenges are in relation to
Nigeria, there are just a couple of things that I would like to
highlight, using the health sector as an example. We tend to think,
at least relatively speaking in the context of Africa, of Nigeria
as a relatively wealthy country. It may be relative, to its neighbours,
but we need to put that in the context of how much does Nigeria
have to spend in-country. Despite the oil wealth and the like
it comes out to maybe 17 US cents per person per day; that is
what the country has to spend on all the programmes in-country.
That is one thing to help us provide a little bit of context.
If you look at the health sector in terms of overall expenditure
per capita the government is able to put in up to about $53 per
person annually, roughly 4 to 6% of government expenditure. At
the same time, looking at the other side of the coin, the amount
of overseas development assistance that goes into Nigeria, focusing
on health in particular and now drilling down a little bit to
focus on child health in particular—as we talk about the
MDGs a number of them, especially those around mortality in particular,
relate to children—the investment in child health in Nigeria
equates to about $2 per child per year. To me those are probably
some of the challenges which basically create a situation where
individual people, families and persons, spend out of a family
budget 63% of their resources on healthcare. That is out of pocket.
Donors put in a certain amount of money, government puts in a
certain amount of money but of the total cost of healthcare 63%
is supported by the individual, coming out of their pocket, whether
that is for transportation—getting to the hospital—buying
medicine, paying fees, et cetera et cetera. That size of a share
of the family budget going into paying for healthcare is one of
the significant difficulties in my view of Nigerians getting access
to healthcare, especially if we take into account that of the
140 million people in Nigeria it is estimated that up to 70 million
live on less than $1 a day.
Q55 Chairman: I take that point and
our other questions will explore that a little bit more. They
have a small amount of money and individuals have to find more
themselves, but what about your dealings as agencies operating
with government and with corruption. Putting it crudely, do you
get put in a situation where people are looking for kickbacks
and how do you deal with that? Are you in a situation where, if
you are not careful, you are engaged and then find that whatever
you have done has somehow disappeared or gone somewhere else?
How much of a problem is that for your operations?
Ms Ajayi: For VSO we are working
through volunteers, as you know, so it means that we have very
little direct support in terms of money to partners. We have some
small grants that we give to partners but other than that our
support is through volunteers. Within the SNR programme (Strengthening
Nigeria's Response to HIV/AIDS) we were one of the three partners
in the DFID-funded programme with ActionAid and Family Health
International, and within that programme we received direct funds
from DFID for our part in that work. We managed those funds ourselves
and reported back to DFID and are still doing so, so the support
from those funds that we gave to partners including state-level
agencies and SACAs—the State Agencies for Control of AIDS—in
the states where that programme was operating in, was through
activity-based work. For example, we recently took on a tour,
a group of partners including government workers, to a programme
in Namibia where we had an exchange of lessons learned and examples
of home-based care and working with orphans and vulnerable children
through our partners in Namibia. That was a mix of partners from
civil society organisations and from state level government workers.
It is therefore not something that we find that we are concerned
about in our everyday work because everyone operates within our
own VSO policies. We do not pay per diems, which is difficult
within a country where per diems are paid or ESTA codes are paid,
so we are not able to offer the same kinds of terms and conditions
to government workers who travel. That can sometimes be difficult;
however, all the people who have come with us on trips have been
very pleased with the opportunity they have been given, despite
the fact that it has been not as well-supported as it might have
been on a government trip. They have really talked about the learning
that they have taken from those opportunities, so it is not something
that we feel we are compromised by in Nigeria.
Q56 Chairman: How about in terms
of Save the Children?
Mr Tall: Overall, because our
work is similarly focused at community level, the challenges are
less daunting in terms of efficiencies and the like. That said,
the overall context in which you work remains something that you
need to be aware of in terms of procurement, for example, and
other things. There, as in the case of VSO, a number of systems
and procedures exist internally to try and control that external
environment as much as possible. That said though, the larger
element of how well-performing systems are, how much political
commitment today exists at different levels—because you
also have a structure of government in Nigeria which to some degree
is one of the realities that adds complexity. You have your federal
level and, while there may be political commitment at the federal
level, it does not necessarily translate at a state level, and
the concerns of your local government authority, your local government
level, your LGA, may not be in line with where the state is going.
That is a reality that one has to manage and, yes, it means that
although at a national level there is a push for certain direction,
a certain policy that is viewed as progressive and useful, there
is a lot that happens unfortunately between that national federal
level and the translation of it into state level programmes and
beyond. One thing we have seen recently which we think is an excellent
initiative is the initiative of getting the federal government
to publish what has been transferred to states and what is hopefully
then expected to be transferred in turn to local government authorities
for any number of activities. With initiatives of that nature—I
have talked about the problem a little bit in terms of translating
policies and priorities down the chain and using initiatives like
Publish What You Pay is one way of making sure that there is transparency
and people know what to expect and what is coming their way, and
are put in a better position to demand that those activities and
resources be made available for objectives that have been agreed
upon.
Q57 Mr Singh: Nigeria is not aid
dependent, quite clearly, and combined donor aid effort represents
1% of GDP in Nigeria. Is there actually any point, in respect
of such small sums, in donors being involved in Nigeria because
with just 1% of GDP surely we cannot be making any impact on poverty
reduction, can we?
Mr Tall: The 1% might seem relatively
small but in terms of the leverage that that 1% can bring in there
is an important role for outside partners to remain engaged with
Nigeria, especially because if you take a little bit of history
going from the years when Nigeria was under military rule to the
return of democracy with President Obansanjo and President Yar'Adua
now there may be a certain amount of willingness to move things
in a certain direction at a federal level that would need to be
supported, and a lot of the support coming from organisations
like DFID or multilaterals such as the World Bank and the United
Nations might actually be extremely helpful in sustaining the
government's drives at a federal level towards a certain result.
But I still come back to the perception that Nigeria is a rich
country, and that may be being a bit optimistic in terms of how
we look at Nigeria. Issues of governance as a particular element—and
I touched upon it a bit earlier—are a fundamental factor,
whether in the education system or the health system. Governance
defined a little bit more specifically around the systems and
the processes that make the sectors work in my view needs to continue
to be supported, and what comes in from DFID or from the World
Bank or from other bilateral partners in Nigeria helps to not
only support those policy initiatives at a federal level but it
also goes a long way towards supporting a lot of the service delivery
at the state level. I started talking about leverage; with those
resources from overseas development assistance (ODA) it puts all
of us in a much better position to leverage a much larger set
of resources of Nigeria itself. I mentioned earlier how much Nigeria
puts into the health sector and I would suggest that we might
be in a good position to require of Nigeria that they at least
try and meet the objectives of the Abuja Declaration, which was
to put at least 15% of the total budget expenditure into the health
sector, which was agreed among members of ECOWAS.[2]
In between ODA leveraging policy work at the federal level, leveraging
additional resources to states might be useful.
Q58 Mr Singh: From what you have
said you seem to agree with the kind of distribution of DFID aid,
because DFID spends 75% of its budget in Nigeria on technical
assistance at, say, government level, and only 20% on programmes
for the poor. Is this the right kind of split in terms of its
budget?
Ms Ajayi: I actually wanted to
make a comment on not just the amount of money that is spent but
the skills transfer, and obviously with our work through volunteers
that is something that we are focused on, but to me the support
that DFID has given, for example through SNR and our volunteers
also shows that that technical assistance is important to DFID
as well. Part of the lasting legacy of the aid support to Nigeria
is building the long term capacity of civil society organisations,
of local government, of state government, and that is an important
part of the aid package to Nigeria. So when you are saying that
most is on technical assistance, that does have the opportunity
to offer longer term capacity building in all of those areas.
We do need to be careful that we are trying to maximise technical
assistance that is available in Nigeria, of which there is some—not
all is there—but certainly for us at VSO we have to make
sure that we try and look for interventions and partners that
need support in areas where those skills are not available in
Nigeria. We can also look at expanding that to look at external
assistance and trying to maximise the capacity that we have all
built in Nigeria, to use it as much as possible where it is available
and continue to take a long term view of support in technical
assistance to make sure that it stays within the country and is
used as much as possible as well.
Q59 Mr Singh: Which brings me to
my question, in terms of both your organisations what support
does DFID give you in terms of funding and what would be the impact
be without that funding or support from DFID?
Mr Tall: For Save the Children
DFID supports a health programme which aims to do two things:
one is to revitalise routine immunisation in northern Nigeria;
and the second element is about maternal and child health contributing
to reducing morbidity and mortality in Northern Nigeria. Also,
as part of the Education Sector Support Programme (ESSPIN), Save
the Children is part of the consortium dealing mostly with the
community engagement part, meaning participation of communities
in the management of schools in Nigeria. Those are the two main
areas where we are receiving support from DFID-funded programmes.
What would happen without that? Let us take immunisation as an
example: of the whole region that I oversee in West and Central
Africa the immunisation rates in Nigeria are actually among the
lowest anywhere. Without those resources to try and restart the
immunisation system we would basically see those probably sliding
further and we would have more children contracting and dying
of diseases that can be easily prevented. That is just to give
you a sense of what would happen there. Coming back to the earlier
question, overall my understanding is that the programme of co-operation
that the DFID and the federal government of Nigeria have is based
on the Poverty Reduction Strategy that Nigeria put together a
few years back. I do not know it in detail but my immediate understanding
is that a number of the programmes and activities that come under
that, whether they are in health or in education or in livelihoods,
are aimed at reducing poverty and in some instances stimulating
growth as part of that poverty reduction. That said, the elements
that Save the Children are directly engaged in, in education and
in health, in my view contribute directly towards poverty reduction
over the medium to long term. What might be useful to keep in
mind in doing so though is to make sure that at the level of specific
strategic choices the poor do get access—and again I use
health as an example—and we increase the access to healthcare
for the poor. If indeed one of the barriers is financial then
I would want to see those programmes—
1 Millennium Development Goals. Back
2
Economic Community of West African States. Back
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