Abia tops South East in NGF Primary Healthcare Challenge, wins $500,000 zonal prize

Abia State has emerged as the best-performing state in the South-East at the 2025 Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) Primary Healthcare (PHC) Leadership Challenge Awards, clinching a zonal cash prize of $500,000.

The award was presented on Thursday night, December 12, at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, Abuja.

Abia’s victory marks an improvement on its 2024 outing, when the state finished runner-up behind Anambra State and received $400,000. This year’s performance saw Abia edge out other South-East states to claim the top regional position.

According to the organisers, the NGF PHC Leadership Challenge is designed to periodically assess and benchmark states’ progress in strengthening their primary healthcare systems using a Performance Monitoring Framework (PMF). The framework, developed jointly by key PHC stakeholders and endorsed by all states through their commissioners for health and executive secretaries, measures performance across governance and leadership, financing, quality of care, evidence-based decision-making and sustainability.

Following the signing of the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative (NHSRII) Compact in 2023, the PMF was reviewed to incorporate Presidential Priority Indicators.

Abia’s success was attributed to sustained investments in the health sector by the administration of Governor Alex Otti, particularly the state’s consistent allocation of about 15 per cent of its annual budget to healthcare since the government assumed office.

The state recently also topped the 2025 SBM Health Preparedness Index, emerging as Nigeria’s most prepared state for health emergencies with a score of 26.85.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, Vice President Kashim Shettima, represented by the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, CON, commended state governments for increasing funding for healthcare and improving service delivery.

Prof. Pate described healthcare funding as a critical investment, noting that “good health is not cheap,” and urged states to continue prioritising both funding and affordability. He added that while a healthy person may have many wishes, a sick person has only one – good health.

Responding on behalf of the award winners and runners-up across the geopolitical zones, including overall winner Yobe State, Governor Otti said his administration does not view healthcare spending in terms of financial returns.

“For us, we spend on healthcare, we don’t look at it as an investment because once you begin to look at it as an investment, the next thing you would begin to look at would be returns,” he said. “We see investment in healthcare as a necessary condition for people to survive in your state. It is necessary for your people to be alive.”

Governor Otti noted that Abia did not initially approach the programme as a competition but was focused on consistently improving healthcare delivery.

“If you know what you are doing and you keep doing it, I think somebody must notice,” he said, adding light-heartedly that the state would “raise the bar” in future editions now that it is aware of the competitive element.

The Abia governor expressed appreciation to the Nigeria Governors Forum and development partners supporting the initiative, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Aliko Dangote Foundation, World Bank, UNDP and UNICEF, as well as other international and local partners.

On behalf of the six states recognised at the event – Yobe, Zamfara, Nasarawa, Osun, Rivers and Abia – Governor Otti thanked the organisers and pledged continued commitment to strengthening primary healthcare delivery.

“The reward for hard work is more work,” he said, assuring stakeholders that the states would continue to build on the gains recorded.

The awards ceremony was attended by governors, senior government officials, development partners and key stakeholders in Nigeria’s health sector.