BEVERLY HILLS, July 24, (THEWILL) – The House of Representatives has insisted that Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, must appear before it to ascertain reasons behind the suspension of the Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Professor Usman Yusuf.
Chairman of House Committee on Health, Chike Okafor, who asked the Minister to appear before the committee on Thursday, also gave Wednesday as deadline for the 35 recalcitrant Health Management Organisations (HMOs) to make their financial records available to commissioned auditors for payment update from the NHIS.
THEWILL recalls that the committee is currently investigating the alleged mismanagement of N351 billion paid to HMOs by the NHIS between 2005 and 2017 and had recently conducted a two-day public hearing where scary revelations of financial mismanagement by HMOs were made by Yusuf.
However, Yusuf was suspended by Adewole for for three months, a development which angered the federal lawmakers who swiftly, through a motion at a plenary, ordered the Health Minister to recall the NHIS boss, fearing that his suspension would jeopardize their investigations into the financial mismanagement.
The House further mandated the Minister to appear before it to convince the lawmakers of his action against the Executive Secretary insisting that he must appear before the committee on Thursday.
“We have written the minister to invite him to appear before us as mandated by the House. The date given in the letter isThursday, 27 July,” Okafor said.
“I have been in touch with the minister and the last time we spoke, he told me he was traveling to Ibadan on Friday for the burial of the late Executive-Director of UNFPA, Prof Babatunde Osotimehin.
“He didn’t tell me he wouldn’t be able to appear before the committee. The right procedure is for him to write the committee, if he will not appear before us and as I speak with you, we haven’t received any letter from him, so I believe we will be meeting with him on Thursday.”
Okafor said.
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