In what appears to be a tacit endorsement of the decision of the Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Usman Yusuf, to sit tight despite a suspension order by the board of the scheme, the Federal government has told governing boards of its agencies they neither have the power to fire nor suspend chief executives appointed by the President.
\nAt best, they can only articulate infractions, investigate wrong doing and make recommendations to government through the supervisory ministries.
\nThe role of boards, according to Mr. Boss Mustapha, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, is limited to setting operational and administrative policies for their agencies in consonance with government policy directives.
\nMustapha, who spoke at the induction programme for governing board members of federal parastatals, universities and medical centres, added: \u201cA Board shall not be involved directly in the day-to-day management of a parastatal or an agency. A Minister exercises control of parastatals at policy level through the board of the parastatal only.
\n\u201cThe board must only operate as a part time board, in accordance with extant rules that forbids allocation of official quarters to members on a permanent basis and payment of estacode allowances for only overseas travels approved by the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and their part-time Ministry.\u201d
\nHe said further that government was bothered that boards were taking on the roles of management boards and getting involved in the day-to-day running of parastatals and agencies; blatant disregard for extant regulations guiding the conduct of board meetings; and
\ninterference in the function of the CEOs; issuing directives to staff, without recourse to the CEOs; imposing disciplinary measures against the CEOs, in disregard of laid down rules.
\nSome, he added, even used labour unions to distract the management of agencies.
\nRecall that in the face-off between the Board of NHIS and Yusuf, the Labour unions were in the forefront of preventing the Executive Secretary from resuming to his desk after he resisted the suspension order of the board.
\nAfter his suspension two Thursdays ago, Yusuf showed up the next day, insisting that since the President was his appointing authority, only he ccould suspend him.
\nSuspended last year by the supervising Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, Yusuf resumed on the strength of his alleged recall by President Muhammadu Buhari based on a motion by the House of Representatives.
\nProf Yusuf last week Monday arrived the premises of the headquarters of the Scheme with over 50 fully armed Mobile Policemen who broke through the gate to the Headquarters as well as fired tear gas canisters to disperse staff members of the organisation that tried to prevent Yusuf from entry the NHIS premises.
\nIt is not exactly clear who ordered the Police to clear the angry workers of the agency who blocked his way, but accusing fingers are pointed in his direction, as staff bemoaned how the Executive Secretary \u201ccan be more powerful than the board and a minister.\u201d
\nThe Chairman of the governing board of the NHIS,\u00a0Ifenna Enyanatu, announced Yusuf\u2019s suspension at a press conference in Abuja on Thursday, 18th October, 2018.
\nShe said Yusuf was suspended over allegations of financial infractions levelled against him.
\nShe also said the executive secretary had refused to carry out the board\u2019s decisions on critical issues and institutionalised corruption at the agency.
\nShe accused him of allegedly inflating the scheme\u2019s 2018 budget, \u201cfraudulently inflating the cost of biometric capturing machines\u201d, and \u201cattempt to illegally execute N30 billion in federal government bonds\u201d.
\nThe board also alleged that Yusuf carried out unauthorised staff travel \u201cin defiance to council directive\u201d, \u201csuperfluous arrogation of project vehicles\u201d and added he has been insubordinate.
\nIfenna added that one Sadiq Abubakar was to act as executive secretary of the scheme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In what appears to be a tacit endorsement of the decision of the Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Usman Yusuf, to sit tight despite a suspension order by the board of the scheme, the Federal government has told governing boards of its agencies they neither have the power to fire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":12807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}