The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has recovered a huge sum of money, running into several millions of Naira belonging to the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) from some individuals and institutions.
The acting chairman of EFCC, Mr Ibrahim Magu, has, therefore, promised the NHIS leadership, during an advocacy visit to the corporate Head Office of the commission recently, to release the huge funds.
“The EFCC boss has actually assured the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) of its readiness to release the recovered funds of the Scheme in its custody, which the Commission has been holding for safety purposes, to the leadership of the scheme,” the Head, Media & Public Relations of NHIS, Ayo Osinlu, has said.
He explained that the funds were those the EFCC had assisted the Scheme to recover in recent times from certain persons and institutions who had improper custody of such funds.
The EFCC Chairman told the Executive Secretary of NHIS, Professor Mohammed Nasir Sambo, that the funds were retained in the safety of EFCC custody because the agency needed “concrete assurance of due process, transparency and accountability in the further handling of the recovered funds.”
Pledging the readiness of the anti-graft body to assist the Scheme always, the EFCC boss advised his NHIS counterpart to intensify his ongoing value reorientation strategy to deepen the moral tone of staff and stakeholders of the Scheme.
He described the Scheme as a very helpful institution in healthcare financing, citing pleasant examples from his personal experience together with his family as enrolees of NHIS.
The Executive Secretary of NHIS, Professor Sambo had sought the assistance of EFCC in the release of funds it assisted the Scheme to recover from unlawful possessions.
Prof. Sambo thanked the commission for such recoveries in the past that had been remitted to the Scheme.
According to him, the call for the release of the funds partly arose from the dwindling resources of the Scheme, even while recent rapid assessments of the new leadership indicated pressing the need of funds for critical activities to grow the mandate of the Scheme.
Sambo told his host that parts of his strategies for taking the Scheme to the next level are “the professionalization of the operations of the organisation, strengthening the state offices to be able to effectively manage operations at that level since the bulk of the work is in the field space, and the firm application of the reward and sanction mechanism to regulate conduct of all players in the industry.’
Credit: Nigerian Tribune
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