I Paid Pregnant Women ₦10,000 To Attend Antenatal – Amaechi

The African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential running mate, Rotimi Amaechi, has recalled paying pregnant women ₦10,000 each to attend antenatal care while serving as governor of Rivers State.

Naija News reports that Amaechi made this known while speaking at the ‘Her Health, Her Power Conference Africa 2026’, in Abuja on Tuesday.

Amaechi harped on the importance of women’s health, stressing that he built hospitals, employed doctors and nurses in villages across Rivers State because it was rated second on the maternal-child mortality index.

According to Amaechi, the ₦10,000 was part of efforts to improve the health of pregnant women.

He said, “On the issue of health, you certainly cannot make the female look healthier and stronger if the economy is bad.

“In a global economy like that of Nigeria, 40 percent of women are farmers, so we need to do more as politicians to see that women live healthier.

“No matter how much grammar we speak in our different states as governors, we need to do more for our women and another thing we need to do is to make sure that they get educated, they make better leaders when they are educated.

“If you follow what happened in Rivers State when I was a governor, we were rated second on the maternal-child mortality index and to cure that we had to establish health centres in every village.

“Each village has a medical center, we employed two doctors and nurses while we paid N10,000 per woman that went for anti-natal, so our health centres were full every Friday because they were sure of going home with N10,000.

“They are not coming there for their health but for the money and that N10,000 is economy. It’s key that we can’t separate the health of women from economic growth.”