NHIS: Time for heaven to rescue Nigeria

By Nasiru Mansur

When Professor Usman Yusuf took over at the National Insurance Health Scheme, NHIS, in August 2006, his vision was to transform the healthcare system of the country into a world class service.

What he found was an insignificant percentage of Nigerians enrolling in the scheme, mostly federal government workers as well as private businesses with state governments, artisans and other non –formally engaged Nigerians not participating.

He introduced an ambitious programme to ensure a substantial number of Nigerians in both the formal and informal sectors buy into the scheme.

Few months into his tenure, however, alleged  fraudulent activities internally, and with the collaboration of external forces, were discovered to have become cancer that  denied Nigerians the benefit of deriving healthcare services from the institutions set up to facilitate them.

With over N381bn investment by contributors, the scheme failed to provide decent services with enrolees being treated as lepers by hospitals. Investigations by the Executive Secretary revealed that paltry 25% of this amount was actually paid to hospitals as some  managers of the scheme, Health Management Organizations, HMOs had  withheld the funds.

With the near collapse of the scheme, Yusuf  launched an  intervention. For instance, it was discovered  that thousands of enrolees were faked and dubious names  inserted into the payroll by some  HMOs to defraud the system. He also found out that billions of naira  collected by some HMOs was  not remitted to participating hospitals leading to patients’ rejection and in some cases death as a result.

To ensure Nigerians get adequate services, the ES introduced  intervention  including the posting of NHIS desk officers to  participating hospitals to protect the rights of contributors, one of the actions these hyenas were not happy with.

As at today, the HMOs are indebted to the tune of over N3.5bn to  hospitals despite collecting money from contributors and other stakeholders. Furthermore, over 23,000 fake enrolees were uncovered.

The administration  found that some ministry officials also engaged in corrupt activities to the detriment of the scheme through alleged  diversion of funds.

For example, in August 2016 when the ES took over, some government officials allegedly requested for the release of vehicles of the NHIS to be used by their bosses and, 24 months later, the vehicles were still being used by the officials. This was despite the auditor general’s directive to the officials to return the vehicles as their actions contravened  civil service regulation on relationships between government officials and parastatals.

One is inclined to believe that the determination of the Executive Secretary to transform the system, change and fight alleged  corrupt interests within the outside the scheme that led to his suspension for alleged contract fraud.

With the  intervention of the federal government, however, and the directive of  the Acting President,  for a thorough investigation into the activities of the NHIS,  it is hoped that corruption will not  triumph over truth as the President himself warned, ‘ If we did not kill corruption, corruption will kill us’.

*Mansur lives at 12, Wurno  Avenue, Maitama, Abuja and can be reached  via  almansurnasir@gmail.com

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