MATERNAL MORTALITY IN NIGERIA: X-RAYING THE ROLE OF PUBLIC EXPENDITURE ON HEALTH

The Nigerian experience has been characterized by one in which the security of life and property are at its slimmest level for over a decade, as the nation witnessed incessant bombing, kidnapping and un-provoked religious extremist killings, communal clashes and land grumling, to mention but few. They have incidentally resulted in the rising population of orphans and female-households in the country. Also of as major concern is the rising merternal mortality rate across the nation, a sign of the deplorable standard of the health statues of the people. These yet-to-be resolved national issues, thus, informed this study on maternal mortality rate in Nigeria; X-raying the role of public expenditure on Health. The study adopted an ordinary time series data obtained from world development indicators for Nigeria 2021 and regressed maternal mortality rate against; female literacy, urbanization, government expenditure on the health sector and skilled birth attendant through augmented dickey fuller test for stationarity, Johansen test for a long run relationship, error correction model and multiples regression to assess the degree of influence the regressors exerts over the regressed in the research model.. The result indicated that public health expenditure has a negative deductive relationship with mortality rate, which translates to a per cent increase in government expenditure on health, reducing the maternal mortality by 3.69%. Furthermore, the study's policy recommendations were informed by the empirical outcome, which includes the need for government at levels should through the ministry of health in the country structure and implement a national health insurance scheme that would cover delivery, child and mother care for at least one month after birth, while putting effort to alleviate the incessant strike actions by doctors in the country and return stability and sanity to the medical profession in the country. Conclusively, the study asserted that Nigeria could not compete favourably on the international lite while murdering her future at birth.