By Chinenye Anuforo
UNICEF has called for fiscal accountability for Nigerian Children’s Rights, calling for a radical shift in public spending to ensure millions of young lives are not left behind.
The urgent appeal was made during a media dialogue in Lagos on Monday, commemorating the Day of the African Child (DAC) 2025, where Celine Lafoucriere, Chief of UNICEF Field Office for Southwest Nigeria, highlighted the persistent failure to translate policy commitments into tangible benefits for the nation’s youth. Lafoucriere emphasized the urgent need for government action to ensure every Nigerian child has access to basic services. “The Day of the African Child, observed annually, commemorates the brave Soweto school vhildren who, in 1976, paid the ultimate price for asking for a better chance,” she remarked. Nearly five decades later, the reality is that children across Africa, including here in Lagos, are still asking for the same better chance.
Despite Nigeria ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991, millions of Nigerian children continue to be deprived of fundamental rights such as access to basic clean water, nutrition, health care, education, and/or safety.
She lamented that public policy, planning, and spending today remains largely insufficient for the government to uphold its social contract with the Nigerian population and fully ensure every child’s rights is respected.
While acknowledging marginal percentage increases in budgets over the years, Lafoucriere stressed that real spending in favor of children’s rights across all social sectors is still grossly insufficient, largely inefficiently used, and quite poorly tracked.
She highlighted the critical issue of public investment decisions often being made in the absence of disaggregated data, leading to inadequate attrition, consequently leaving vital sectors like health, education, WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene), and protection underfunded.
Addressing the journalists, she underscored their pivotal role. “You, the journalists in this room, are not bystanders. Together with UNICEF, you shape public thinking. You hold leaders and policy makers accountable,” she stated.
She urged the media to help turn allocated budget numbers into real outcomes for children through correct spending.”
The media dialogue, according to Lafoucriere, is a collaborative effort to ask targeted questions, to follow the money, to let civil society, parents and children know of their rights, to lead them to demand for their rights to be respected and upheld, and to write stories that lead to action and to let children’s stories guide your reporting.
Also speaking at the event, Olufemi Olajumi, Director at the Ministry of Budget and Planning, emphasized the long-standing partnership with UNICEF in various child-focused areas, particularly in what he termed child financing. He revealed that Lagos State has moved beyond broad assumptions about child-related spending to a precise system that identifies and assigns specific codes to expenditures benefiting children across various sectors.
“Today, in Lagos State, we are transparent. We are able to identify and assign codes whereby we can easily track the expenses when it comes to children,” Olajumi stated. He explained that previously, such funds were often pooled under general special business expenses, making detailed tracking challenging. “When we sat down with UNICEF, we told them that it is workable. And then we practicalized it. We brought a pilot agency to test run it in our budgets, and it worked.”
The Director elaborated on the methodology, noting that the state carefully considered the definition of a child as anyone under the age of 18, and aligned their tracking with core child rights, including access to affordable healthcare, quality education, freedom from discrimination, survival, and development.
Olajumi underscored the profound significance of a budget, quoting Alexander Hamilton: “It is much more than just a collection of numbers. It is a reflection of a nation’s priorities, its needs, and its promises.” He stressed that a budget serves as a critical guide during planning, preparation, and implementation, reflecting the direction and performance of a government.
He further detailed Lagos State’s rigorous budget cycle, which begins with meticulous planning rooted in long-term development plans, moving to medium and near-term fiscal frameworks. “Anything we are saying today, by the time we finish this budget, I mean, we send it to the House of Assembly, our governor has assented to it, it becomes law. It is a bundle of legal frameworks. You cannot toil with it.”
The new coding system, specifically a unique program within the state’s Oracle-based management information system, allows for precise identification, tracking, documentation, and evaluation of child-related expenditures. This enables a clear view of investments in children across various Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) such as health, justice, education, and social development.
He affirmed Lagos State’s commitment: “The state government’s investment and expenditure towards the child and its rights continue to increase on a year-on-year basis. The state remains committed to the protection of the children and this is demonstrated in our budgets and actual year expenditures.”
In his presentation themed ‘Investing in Children’, Muhammad Okorie, Social Policy Manager, UNICEF, Lagos highlighted the dire consequences of insufficient and inefficient public spending on Nigerian children, despite the country ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child over three decades ago. The consensus points to a cost of inaction that leaves countless young people sick, uneducated, and unprepared for the future.
The presentation, which underscored the critical link between resource insufficiency and systemic inefficiency, revealed that despite some progress in budget allocations, real spending for children across vital social sectors remains woefully inadequate, poorly tracked, and largely inefficient.
“Insufficiency should lead you to prioritization,” he stated advocating for prudent management even in resource-constrained environments. This perspective aligns with economic principles which assert that resources are inherently scarce, making effective allocation paramount.
He stressed the concept of progressive realization,urging governments to demonstrate incremental fulfillment of children’s rights over time, while cautioning against using this as a justification for delaying essential efforts.