57% of Nigerian children are multi dimensionally poor-UNICEF
By Khadija Aliyu
The united nations children’s fund (UNICEF), says 57% of Nigerian children are multi dimensionally poor,without access to education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation, water information, and play.
The social policy specialist (PFM) UNICEF Abuja, Sabastine Akongwale, made the indication during a policy dialogue on financing for children in social sectors, with Kano state parliamentary forum.
According to him,child poverty continues to affect a high number of Nigerian children,saying that, a child can experience both monetary or derivational poverty, as 47.6% of Nigerian Children experience monetary poverty and forced to survive on less than $1.90 dollar per day.
He emphasized, on the need for public financing for children (PF4C), to influence mobilization,allocation and utilization of public financial resources for more greater, equitable and sustainable results.
Sabastine noted that, PF4C would go a long way in promoting transparency, accountability,participation,equity, value for money and adequate public investment for children.
The social policy specialist pointed out that, the 2022 state budget transparency survey, rated Kano house of assembly as the second in terms of legislative strength representing 64%,while public budget documents availability for the state stood at 70%.
Presenting a paper, the UNICEF Kano social policy specialist Fatima Musa, maintained that,the recently released child multiple deprivation analysis (MODA), report identified and quantified child deprivation, and those suffering from multiple and overlapping deprivations.
She stressed that,the MODA analysis has provided further data to enable efficient planning for children, and legislations on child sensitive social protection programming.
” The childs 0-17 years is the unit of analysis,a child is considered multidimensionally poor if he/she is simultaneously deprived in at least 3 dimensions of well being “
At the end of the dialogue,the draft social protection bill was validated, and resolutions were mapped out, including writing a letter to the attorney general for a clean copy of the bill, transmission of the bill to the executive council for approval, before submitting to KNHA for necessary legislative action.
The three day dialogue was organized by Kano state ministry of planning and budget with support from UNICEF.
