From 5-9 October 2026, Fola Adejumo, coach for Team Nigeria, undertook his second country check-in t as part of the Building Public Finance Capabilities for Health (BPFCH) Programme.
While in Abuja, Mr Adejumo engaged with team members from the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare as well as the Federal Ministry of Finance. Team Nigeria kicked off their week by mapping progress against the 90-day plan agreed in April and named both what had moved - State assessments, the mapping of 265 Blueprint interventions, and draft reporting tools - and what remained at prototype stage.
The team also revisited their implementation of the Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) approach and held technical sessions that tracked their progress on the entry points on their fishbone diagram. This exercise helped them to clarify the interdependencies between the workstreams and prepare specific questions for external meetings. The result was a revised joint timeline.
Cognisant of the importance of involving administrative, political, and economic contexts when solving Public Financial Management (PFM) problems, Team Nigeria met with the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) team and the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF), securing a working process for code corrections and in-principle support. They also held bilateral meetings with the Director-General of the Budget Office and the Director at the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, who provided clear endorsements and timed follow-ups, including the protocol on Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) Plan-Budget alignment.
In addition to the technical meetings, the week-long agenda secured ministerial endorsement of the team’s quarterly review as a routine accountability tool, as well as a briefing with the National Coordinator of the SWAp Office. The Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) Secretariat is another entity that was roped in to Team Nigeria’s administrative engagements, to which Dr Uzoma Nwankwo, a member of the team, has recently been appointed as the Executive Secretary.
Mr Adejumo’s visit moved the team from drafting to delivery, and the external meetings yielded concrete next steps, rather than just general goodwill.
It goes without saying that Team Nigeria remains committed to its PDIA journey and has held meaningful engagements leading up to the Progress Review Workshop in November 2026.
The BPFCH programme, funded by The Global Fund, is an action-learning programme designed to build local capabilities in solving local public finance and health financing problems using the PDIA approach.