Umar Abdullahi 
The USAID State2State, in partnership with Kebbi State Government has embarked on capacity building of health finance personnel to reduce issues related to external audit query.
State2State lead team in Kebbi State, Usman Faleye stated this during a 3-day training of health financing internal control tools of the Kebbi State ministry of health comprising of accountants, directors of finance and cashiers from the state ministry, and health MDAs, on how best to improve on their internal control system and ensure prudent in financial transactions.
Faleye said State2State being a public financial management activity is supporting Kebbi state to increase their allocation and expenditure within the health sector to achieving improvement in the health sector.
The training is also aimed to better the participants on how to strengthening their internal control process which has to do with retirements, processing of their memos for approval and ensuring that all the right documentations are in place for pursuing financial processes in the ministry.
He noted that there are increasing audit issues as far as the financial work is concerned and to avoid future problems especially within the health MDAs hence, the need for training.
“We also want to be sure that the right monies are released for the right allocation as captured in budget.
“The trainees are expected to improve their capacity on the new method on how to attend to their payment vouchers, how to fill their cash book effectively and adequately reports financially all their activities within the ministry.”
In his remark, Sarki Kigo, Permanent Secretary, Kebbi State Ministry of Finance said, the idea of the training is to ensure proper internal control from the top management down to the cashier level so as to detect, prevent and correct some of the problems that hinders financial transactions.
Kigo, expressed optimistic that, “the knowledge acquired during the training will impact toward detecting and solving some issue of financial predicament facing the health ministry and other related MDAs in state.
“Whenever approvals are being given by the state governor, the next is to raise a payment voucher and questioned how the vouchers are made, from the relevant deductions to be made down to payment point under the ministry of finance.
The capacity building training will exposes the participants to the rudiments of preparing payment vouchers in conformity with the accepted financial regulations,” he stated.
Also, Dr Jibril Labbo Gwandu, Director Medical Services, Kebbi state Ministry of Health noted that basically the training is organized to acquit the health financing experts with the internal control mechanism, and the way to keep proper records, to answer audits queries in the first instance and improve their financial transactions and accountability.
“It is quite a very important training in the sense that it has gathered all the MDAs in health, so it will be another peer review learning workshop.
“The coming of the State2State in Kebbi state has been a very wonderful job as remembered that recently they were involved in mid term developmental strategy (MTSS),for the health sector.
“Although,State2State came to Kebbi State a bit late compared to other states, but their coming is very important and they have built many capacity especially in the financial management of Kebbi State Ministry of Health.”
Aliyu Ladan, Kebbi state Deputy Accountant General, Ministry of Finance, further acknowledged that, the training was aimed on how financial experts can safeguard the assets of the state and keep their records efficiently.
