USAID S2S Activity partners Gombe Govt on 2024-2026 MTSS workshop

USAID S2S Activity partners Gombe Govt on 2024-2026 MTSS workshop 

Related posts

Akwanga- Jos-Bauchi-Gombe-Biu-Maiduguri super highway construction takes off

July 1, 2026

1k

Malle unveils dev’t agenda for Kaltungo East LCDA

July 1, 2026

1k

Chima Azubuike

The United States Agency for International Development, State Accountability, Transparency and Effectiveness, State2State Activity, has organised a four-day workshop on 2024-2026 Medium Term Sector Strategy.

PERISCOPE NIGERIA reports that MTSS is a Public Financial Management tool that links policy, planning and annual budgets.

The four-day workshop which held at Laylah Suites Gombe, had Adeboye Adeyemo, Abdullahi Belel and Abdulrahman Abdullah, as consultants, with participants drawn from Ministries, Departments, and Agencies as well as Civil Society Organisations.

Our correspondent reports that S2S supports states to plan and budget, raise revenues, increase civil society participation, and oversee service delivery in Health; Education, and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene sectors by building relevant capacities. It’s implemented by Development Alternatives Incorporated.

However, following the Activity’s advocacies, Gombe State Government sponsored 40 participants in about five other sectors to understudy the strategies, while S2S sponsored 24 others.

Speaking during an interview with our correspondent the Local Governance Manager for State2State Activity Gombe field office, who is the acting State Team Lead, Zariyatu Abubakar-Hasidu, said the state’s ten-year development plan tagged DEVAGOM serves as ground from which MTSS three-year strategies are drawn.

She said, “As you know the DEVAGOM is a ten-year strategy now you are breaking it into a three-year strategy from there you pick the budget for one year. It’s a kind of step by step engagement that the government has towards ensuring that they meet their obligations; long term, medium term and the short term.

 

“The short term is the annual budget. Now the different sectors will have a projection for the three years and because of this projection they can be drawing their budget from MTSS. The MTSS is being informed by the ten-year development plan; so it’s a step by step implementation of the development plan.”

On the aspiration of State2State Activity, “We hope to see that our priority sectors of Health,Education and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene are given priority because they are kind of a social sector where it touches the lives of the citizens directly. We hope to see increase in allocation as well as implementation of the budget that is released and performance by ensuring that the three sectors get a very good amount that will improve lives. For Education, we hope to see alot of the gaps that we are witnessing currently met through adequate allocation and funds released So also for Health and Wash sectors. They are the core service delivery sectors and they directly affect the citizens and we find it very important,” Abubakar-Hasidu added.

While urging government to prioritise the needs of the people, she urged authorities to ensure employment of more persons as well as regular trainings, Abubakar-Hashidu added, “We call on the government to always prioritise the needs of the people to always engage with the citizens to know their priorities and to also to be accountable and judicious in the use of resources. One thing important to me not just for the three sectors but the PFM, Ministries Departments and Agencies we are dealing with is the issue of manpower shortage and development of the available ones in terms of trainings and retraining.

“Government should give priority to Education, Health and WASH sectors because there is deficiency in human resources there and also they need to update their knowledge because alot of things are happening, alot of changes in the environment in as much as we are going to look at infrastructure we should also look away from human development aspect.”

Also speaking, USAID S2S Public Financial Management Specialist; Oluwatosin Oke, disclosed that the workshop was a collaboration to support the three sectors prepare their MTSS.

Oke noted that the MTSS covers for three years and would help the state government link its annual budget to the development plans and policies, as well as other global development policies like the Sustainable Development Goals, National Development Plan.

According to him, “It helps them to implement the budget every year that will be delivering those development plans and priorities. For Gombe State we are looking at DEVAGOM, the MTSS is a three-year plan that brings out the ten-year development plan, look at what needs to be implemented within the three years frame and then the budget will now be implemented yearly.”

He added that the workshop would ensure that necessary linkages are achieved, “Basically, what we are trying to to do is to help these sectors link up their budget to policies of the state so that the people who were part of the DEVAGOM preparation, who communicated their needs and priorities to the government will reap the dividends of good governance because the annual budget is now helping them to deliver those needs that they have articulated,” he added.

On the existing collaboration between Gombe State Government and the field office, Oke said, “The state has graciously, sponsored some other sectors that are not our core sectors to understudy the process and to also produce strategy for other sectors. In the past two years the state has been doing only Health, Education and WASH sectors MTSS. In 2021 the state produced for Agriculture and infrastructure but since then it has only been Health, Education and WASH but this year they have sponsored delegates from infrastructure, economy, governance and administration, agriculture, environment, about five additional sectors. Because of fund limitation S2S has adopted the approach of sharing cost of workshops with the state government, while we pay for cost of selected participants, the state government pays for cost of workshop for other participants for instance, cost of feeding and transportation allowance to ensure active participation within the workshop. At S2S we are sponsoring 24 participants and the state government is sponsoring 40 participants.”

On his call for the participating Ministries, Departments and Agencies, “We have tools and templates we developed supporting the state and beyond just working them through. I encourage all participants to understand the importance of this process because if we don’t get it right the annual budget of the state will not be strategic but if we get it right it helps us to be very realistic and help the state to be very realistic in it annual budget. We were discussing during the session how inflation has impacted budgeting, they were looking at the figures budgeted last year and realised the figures are no longer realistic this year. They are beginning to be more strategic, more objective in their analysis. At the end of the day it will be easy to implement the budget and instead of when they just do incremental budgeting by adding figures without going through the strategic process,” the PFM Specialist said.

While enumerating the interventions of S2S, Oke disclosed that they helped the state develop Medium Term and Fiscal Framework as well as Medium Term Budget Framework in order to make realistic projections looking at the state’s revenue.

“For them to be guided earlier in May and July we supported the state to prepare a Medium Term and Fiscal Framework and Medium Term Budget Framework. We looked at the revenue sources of the government and mapped all of them together and forecast what is realistic for the next three years so that at the end of the day the budget that will be pulled from the MTSS will be realistic because the Medium Term Fiscal Framework has given the likely maximum amount the state should be able to realise in terms of revenue and distributed to Medium Term Budget Framework.

 

“What we are doing in MTSS is to identify the sealings identify projects that are most important and contribute the most to DEVAGOM and then cost those projects, add the amount together and then look at the revenue realised that has been shared to the sectors to know if it has been exhausted or we are going above. When these sectors help the state government to align their project to the priority of the people that means the government is implementing projects that meet the needs of the people that way everybody benefits from the budget,” Oke added.