The Speaker of Lagos State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa, on Thursday, advocated for adequate financing of the health sector in order for Nigeria to achieve the University Health Coverage (UHC).

Mr Obasa was speaking at a two-day programme aimed at enhancing salience and capacities of legislators and key stakeholders in the Lagos State health sector to catalyse Nigeria’s progress towards universal health coverage.

At the event organised by Lagos State House of Assembly in conjunction with Legislative Advocative Initiative for Sustainable Development (LISDE), the speaker, who was respresented by his deputy, Wasiu Eshilokun, harped on the imperative of more funding for the health sector.

“To my mind, the biggest challenge facing the health sector in Nigeria is lack of adequate financing. This is because none of the other problems is too obscure to identify or complicated to solve, but achilles’ heel is the wherewithal to the solution.

“On this ground, I salute the determination of the stakeholders in this sector for your efforts day and night to tackle these rather evasive but tormenting problems,” he said.

Also speaking at the event, the Chairman House Committee on Health Services, Akeem Sokunle, said the essence of the two-day programme was to deepen understanding of the Legislature on Health Financing, UHC and PHC policies and objobjectives.

He added that the programme would enhance understanding of legislative functions and the application of these functions towards ensuring expansion of health financial risk protection mechanisms to target population.

Speaking the with journalists at the venue of the programme in Lagos, the Executive Director of LISDEL, Juliana Abude-Aribo, gave the Lagos government a pass mark regarding health financing while also acknowledging a lot could still be done.

When asked about her assessment of Lagos effort towards achieving the Universal Health Coverage, she said, “Lagos is doing relatively well, there are areas of course that need to be improved upon.”

“One of the reasons we are here is because of basic health provision for the people, what you called in Lagos, Ilera Eko, there is also improvement in the primary healthcare system in Lagos,” Ms Abude-Aribo added.