By Abdoulaye Kay
The Bill Gates Foundation and Nigeria Governor’s Forum have commended Governor Aliyu Wamakko for maintaining the status of polio-free state.
Gates commendation was contained in a letter to the Governor, a copy of which was made available to Newsdiaryonline.com.
“It is a tremendous accomplishment and the foundation is enormously grateful to the Governor and all the state health team and other stakeholders, especially those involved in the polio eradication initiative in the state,” the letter read in parts.
It also commended him for the strong leadership that has helped in eradicating polio and improved routine immunisation in Nigeria.
In a related development, the Peer Review Report of Nigeria Governor’s Forum (NGF) has given pass mark to the governor for allocating 27 percent of her annual budget to education.
The commendation was contained in the remarks of Mr. A. Okauru, Director General of the Forum during its inaugural meeting on the State Peer Review Mechanism with the Executive Council in Sokoto on Wednesday.
“Many laudable achievements in the health sector include the. Construction of 120 primary healthcare centres (PHC); upgrading of nine PHCs to general hospitals; upgrading of 21 clinics to PHCs and procurement of 30 ambulances for the Rural Medical care programme,” NGF stated.
It also commended Sokoto state government for training 9,070 unemployed youths in various skills acquisition programmes.
NGF however observed that “The budget process was still very weak, particularly in the areas of project costing.
