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By Abdullahi Alhassan, Kaduna
The Kano State Government has placed Public Financial Management (PFM) reforms at the core of its development agenda, declaring that a budget is no longer just a statement of projected revenues and expenditures but a moral contract between government and citizens.
This was disclosed by the Commissioner of Planning and Budget, Alhaji Musa Sulaiman Shanono, while declaring open a 4-day workshop on HOPE-GOV Assessment and Health Budget Implementation Reporting in Kaduna. The workshop was jointly organized by the Ministry of Planning and Budget and the International Budget Partnership (IBP), with funding from the Gates Foundation, to improve outcomes of the HOPE-GOV programme in the state and strengthen Primary Health Care delivery.
According to the commissioner, over the past months the government has rolled out aggressive reforms aimed at ensuring allocation efficiency, fiscal discipline, and citizens’ participation, so that the voices of the people are reflected in the budget process.
He acknowledged the role of the HOPE-GOV Assessment as a timely framework that helps translate macro-level fiscal reforms into micro-level sector successes. Shanono stressed that governance assessments are not instruments of criticism but mirrors for self-reflection.
“Therefore, the HOPE Assessment provides us with the empirical baseline needed to evaluate how effectively our governance structures support health service delivery, as well as allowing us to pinpoint bottlenecks in fund releases, assess bureaucratic hurdles, and optimize the value-for-money ratio in every naira spent on public health,” he said.
The commissioner lamented that if the government allocates a large percentage of its budget to the health sector without translating those allocations into functional Primary Health Care facilities, available commodities, well-trained staff, and reduced maternal mortality, then the PFM reforms remain incomplete.
Speaking on the workshop, Shanono said it would focus on Health Budget Implementation Reporting, which he described as critical. He noted that real-time, accurate, and transparent reporting bridges the gap between intention and impact, and ensures proper tracking mechanisms to monitor funds from the central treasury down to frontline health clinics across the local government areas in the state.
He called on participants, technical teams, and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to participate actively, challenge existing paradigms, and co-create practical reporting frameworks that can be seamlessly integrated into Kano State’s planning and budgetary systems.
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