NHIS executive secretary, Prof Yusuf, resumes

The reinstated Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Professor Usman Yusuf, said he resumed work yesterday.

Speaking to Daily Trust last night, Professor Yusuf said he had resumed work by meeting with some key officials of the agency.

“I have resumed. You know, the reinstatement is with immediate effect. I will be in the office tomorrow (today),” he said.

Professor Yusuf was suspended by the Minister of Health Professor Isaac Adewole on July 6, 2017. He was reinstated by the Federal Government on Tuesday.

When our reporter visited the NHIS headquarters in Utako and the annex office at Wuse 2 Abuja yesterday, normal activities were going on in the offices.

Daily Trust gathered that Yusuf met with President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday at the Presidential Villa, alongside Professor Adewole and the immediate past acting executive secretary of the agency, Malam Attahiru Ibrahim.

Professor Yusuf was suspended over his refusal to oblige to series of monetary requests by the health ministry, Daily Trust investigations had shown.

A committee set up by the minister accused Prof Yusuf of corrupt expenditure on health care training without recourse to any appropriate approving authority. Professor Yusuf, however, denied these allegations.

Official documents analysed by this newspaper show that the NHIS chief incurred the wrath of the ministry for refusing to grant the health ministry’s various requests of sponsorship of its officials to foreign events, hiring of aircrafts for the minister, among others.

But trouble started for Prof Yusuf in March 18, 2017, when the minister requested for N197 million from the scheme “intervention fund” to execute some projects located across seven Federal Medical Centres, through a letter with reference number DFA/ CORR/001, and signed by the ministry’s then permanent secretary Mrs Binta Adamu Bello.