Sanwo-Olu presents Lagos scorecard for public scrutiny on $500m World Bank loan
CHIGOZIE AMADI
Lagos State government on Thursday presented a scorecard of its portion of $500million World Bank Loan Agreement support fund under key areas of governance, primary healthcare and education.
The presentation which took place at the State House, Marina was coordinated by the ministry of Economic Planning and Budget.
The project was tagged, ‘Human Capital Opportunities for Prosperity & Equity- HOPE.
The implementation began from 2024 where formal approval and signing of the Subsidiary Loan Agreement was carried out.
The State government had established steering and technical committees to oversee the three levers which are: HOPE GOV, EDU and PHC.
As part of the implementation of the project, the presentation was witnessed by the World Bank Independent Verification Agents (IVAs) to audit the 2025 audit results.
While delivering his keynote address, the Lagos State Governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu said the strategic reform initiative was designed to improve health coverage and deliver essential services to the people, especially in areas of poverty.
Sanwo-Olu noted that the programme ensures that investments in these sectors are not only made, but they are efficiently managed and translated to real benefit for the people.
Sanwo-Olu said, “So for us in Lagos, this programme is about people, it’s about our city, about ensuring that the child has access to the right learning materials and the mother can receive quality care at our primary health institution without a heavy financial burden.
“And to ensure that public resources are managed in a way that every Lagosian can see, they can understand, and they can go on to trust.
“Today’s event is therefore not only about implementation, policies, and programmes, it is about showcasing practical results, giving public awareness, and encouraging every citizen to be resilient, to take full advantage of this opportunity.
“So this initiative is an advantage to all our children and their families. Because of the growth of employment, and the most important objective is to make sure that government works better, government plans better, government spends better and government can deliver better outcomes for all its policies and for its people.
“Under this framework, literacy has made remarkable impact. We have sustained economic performance consistently above 80% in our year-on-year success rate.”
On the governance, the Governor noted, “Citizen-Friendly Project Publications strengthens our medium-term expenditure framework and it helps us expand our digital platforms including the legacy project model and other focused financial management which enables our citizens to track government spending and predict what we are doing in real-time.
“We have also an advanced workforce at the local government level through the domestication and adoption of the national type of accounts and the project facilitation workforce at 20 local government levels and we have supported it by continuous training and the provision of tools to ensure that we are sustainable at a high level of finance.”
Governor Sanwo-Olu added that in the area of primary healthcare, the administration has continued to scale up access and quality healthcare because it now has over 330 functional primary health care centres across the State.
“Many of these have been rehabilitated or upgraded under our ongoing health sector reforms including optimized centres that are giving more efficient and community-focused care. Some of these primary health centres are ensuring that more residents and especially women and children can receive timely and quality care.”
In his speech, the Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, Ope George said, the core objectives of the HOPE project is to strengthen financial and human resource management and improve service delivery in health, education, and in governance.
George noted, “So it’s a 500 million dollars national initiative using the programme for result instruments where funds are dispersed often to achieve this possible linked results.
“And it serves for us as a vital system for us to drive public financial management reforms, transparency and data-driven governance.
“We’ve ensured that the prudent allocation of public resources have been provided to enable the framework to support our broader human capital objectives.”
He maintained that the Hope project was implemented as a critical budget reforms by ensuring that “we’ve adopted the National Chart of Accounts which is going across all local governments.
“So the states and health systems have been equipped and effective to be able to prepare the top projects and which ultimately has been standardised across all local accounts.”
The Commissioner for Health, Prof Akin Abayomi reiterated the project has supported healthcare facilities, increasing availability of essential communities, upgrading of infrastructure by strengthening workforce capacity.
He said the initiative has helped in improving staff skills, service delivery and patient care, reducing the workload of the existing personnel.
On his part, Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Mr Jamiu Alli-Balogun said the programme has ensured that every child had access to quality education and in provision of learning materials to pupils.
He also stressed that the progmme has provided teachers with training capacity for effective delivery.
