The governing board of the
National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has defended its decision to suspend
Usman Yusuf, executive secretary of the scheme.
Speaking during an investigative
hearing by a house of representatives ad-hoc committee, Enyantu Ifenne,
chairman of the governing board, said the decision was to ensure transparency
at the agency.
The board had recently suspended
Yusuf over allegations of financial infractions and abuse of office.
But Yusuf kicked against the
move, arguing that it is only President Muhammadu Buhari that has the power to
discipline him.
A resultant crisis at the scheme
had prompted the president to send Yusuf on “administrative leave” and order an
investigation into the matter.
The house of representatives
subsequently set up the ad-hoc committee to investigate the matter in a bid to
resolve the crisis.
Ifenne on Thursday told the
committee that the NHIS had become “dysfunctional” under Yusuf.
Asked to comment on the legality
of the suspension, she replied: “If we erred, the president acted yesterday by
correcting us. There are gaps in the (NHIS) act and we were justified by the
action we took to ensure that the NHIS was run transparently.”
The NHIS senior staff association
and the medical health workers’ union also made a joint presentation to the
panel, which supported the council’s submission.
She alleged, among other things,
that the management under Yusuf fraudulently padded the scheme’s 2018 budget to
the tune of N1.3 billion and inflated the ICT expenditure from N7.7 billion in
2015 to N14.9 billion in 2018.
Ifenne also lamented the
“punitive staff postings”, “unauthorised travels”, “wilful defiance of council
directives” as other offences allegedly committed by Yusuf.
Yusuf, who was at the hearing,
deferred his presentation to the next sitting on Friday.
The embattled NHIS executive
secretary has asked the court to nullify his suspension and declare that the
governing board has no power to discipline him.
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