According to a recently released survey report, the management and staff of the Nigerian Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) squandered the sum total of ₦6.8 billion in the form of illegal allowances.
This misappropriation was said to have been during the time of sacked NHIS Executive secretary- Usman Yusuf.
A huge amount of money sunk into this unapproved allowances is also not supposed to payable to workers in the Federal public service.
Legally, any money to be paid on allowance in the public service is supposed to be submitted to National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission for proper review and implementation. Other irregularities were uncovered such as the ₦61 million spent by the NHIS to fund International travels. This was also done without approval.
The whooping sum of ₦21 million was also given to officers that were going to be retiring ‘retiring officer’ to attend a workshop which there is no trace or prove of attendance of the workshop. The NHIS executive officer and his allies allegedly also have fleets of expensive cars illegally given to them.
Usman Yusuf who has several misconducts smeared on his name and tied around him was first accused of fraud, insubordination amidst several other things. He was on two occasions suspended and after he was ratted out and stopped being the Executive Chairman, he was replaced by Mohammed Sambo.
Mohammed since then has been trying to drive the boat of the NHIS far from the shores of failure or crash. Mohammed Sambo listed out the three-point agenda he has in store for NHIS. And the one that caught our eyes the most is the” restoring value system that will transform NHIS into a credible result-driven organization’’.
