Sydney Sampson: Heath Sector Needs to be Data-centric in Terms of Decision Making
Kuni Tyessi
In getting it right in terms of policy formulation and its implementation in the nation’s public health, Chief Executive Officer of Sydani Groups, Sydney Sampson advocates for a blend of technology and data. Celebrating five years of existence in corporate services, he says Nigeria isn’t doing too well in the health sector. Amongst other things, he spoke to recently on public health financing and accountability, as well as need for partnerships, but especially on what the new administration can do to turn around the sector for good What inspired the setting up of Sydani group and what do you hope to achieve?
Igovernment, t was set up with the vision to redefine excellence and to add value consistently to work that is done by anyone, be it the
non-government, external and internal stakeholders; and one thing I always make clear is that the organisation was not a well thought out plan where I had a master plan of what to do. It was very organic and with organic things, there parts that are predictable and others are unpredictable. So as we grew and added value, clients came back for more and that also shaped how our trajectory of growth evolved.
One thing that remained consistent within our existence in the first five years is the ability to understand the problems that our clients want to solve and device very innovative ways of addressing those problems. At Sydani we don’t believe that impossibility exists if you apply yourself well enough to a problem and think through it, it can be solved. So we ensured that while adding value, we ensured that there is excellence in adding that value.
On excellence, can you be more specific?
It’s difficult to be specific about excellence but it can be defined in different ways depending on what one is talking about. Our target is not in a specific sector. We have several sectors where we provide and add value. Take for example, the Covid-19 vaccination programme in the health sector. We were funded to support the national government to support the optimization of that mission. We had a strategy that was working but wasn’t achieving the goals as expected in terms of the target of the number of people that had been reached by the vaccine and Sydani was contacted to help look at the country and help device a strategy that can help get the numbers.
So what we did in terms of talking about excellence was to define the strategy. In defining it, we got the government to adopt it and it was called the skilled strategy. After the first role out, we observed that there were some things that were not working and so we optimized it and made a few changes and called it the next version. Then we got the third version which had a lot of excellent things that was based on the learning of the previous ones. So it’s a process, it’s something that can be improved upon. So ours is how can we work on something and make it better. So it got to a time when we got the third version and that was the game changer and it broke out the charts in terms of the number of people that were reached and were to be reached and how it was to be done.
The federal government rolled it out and the process was applauded and it took us to breaking a lot of barriers. We changed all of that and showed that you can actually go in a different way to achieve excellence. Yet, there are still many things we want to improve upon as a learning organisation in achieving excellence.
In the public health sector, what has been the journey and challenges so far in the last five years?
In that space where we have quite a large portfolio of work, we have seen ourselves growing from team working to general relation work system that brings about leadership and governance work, health financing components, supply chain components, and many other aspects. So the biggest challenge has been finding the right people that we could work with. The kind of work we do needs smart people and persons that can think in a very innovative way. The biggest challenge is finding the right people to hire.
From the days when we were very young till now, this is a challenge we’ve always faced. We have really never lacked jobs to do, because people keep coming back to ask
for more. There’s enough work, but who are we going to use for the job? And when you get some really good hands, some get to japa. So we have to keep scouting for new hands. So this is the biggest challenge we have had.
Talking about the right kind of people, what exactly are you looking for?
We are looking for people who can think outside the box. The normal ways of thinking has to be innovative. As management consultants, our job is to be able to think outside the box. For the interviews, we throw a question at you and want to see how you can tackle it openly and how you can also learn on the job while trying to solve that problem.
We want people that have an open mind to solving problems and at the same time being specific about those problems that we pose at them. For us here, it’s not about qualification as long as you have your basic university qualification and you did well with a first class or second class upper. What we have discovered over the years is that when we interview about twenty people, you’d see that only one or two meet our requirement.
Will you say Nigeria is doing well in terms of public health financing?
We are trying to improve and there’s very little progress made. Are we doing well as a country? Certainly not! We are very far from the benchmark. We are very far from the standard. We are not doing well at all compared to many other countries in Africa. But are there opportunities to improve? Yes! Is the government doing enough to improve that? Yes they are. Can the government do more? Yes, for sure. Recently we heard that the Act for the national health insurance policy was passed and is creating a vulnerable group fund that will try to address that particular group of people that are unable to access care because they don’t have the resources.
We also know that there are plans in place to make health insurance mandatory which again will make the government to provide more resources to be able to reach our teeming population. In terms of investment in health, how much is the government budgeting? Is it budgeting enough? No! The Abuja declaration is what we all know that the government is expected to allocate 15 percent of its revenue to health. Are we close to that place? No! We are probably somewhere around five percent. So we are not doing well. The problems in Nigeria are huge and I know the government is putting in a lot of effort but certainly I know there is much more they can do to improve on resource availability to get Universal Health Coverage which will make people to access the right care that they need and at the right time.
In terms of public health accountability, where will you place the country at the moment?
On a scale of ten, I can say- two.
What do you think the nation can do to improve it?
What we can do to change it is what I call Crowd Source Accountability and by this, I mean giving power to the people to hold the government more accountable. We know that there are CSOs and other entities that come out to hold the government accountable, but how are we bringing in technology and innovation in order to bring out the lack of accountability of the government. No body sets out to fail, but in the process of trying to set out to do something different and worthwhile, people may fail.
But if there was a system of the government that is people-led, and is backed with technology that is able to provide that guidance, then that will be one step in trying to stem out lack of accountability. In the end, we expect the government systems to work. If the government that is the machinery is not accountable, all we can do is to continue to empower the people and push to get the government from two, to five, to seven and someday, they’d get there. But we can’t totally leave the government out of the Issue if we will have full accountability.
Moving forward, will there be openings for partnerships?
Our work is to support different entities including the government. We want to work with the government at all levels to help them deliver their mandate and this is at federal and state levels. We will look at the systems they operate critically and see how they can be optimized. Another is to ensure consistency in policies and ensuring that policies have the private sector in mind. So if government in defining its policies is deliberate in considering the needs of private businesses, then they would need to do more.
A new team is coming in and sometimes from what you see, there will be policy summersault and what the other team has done in the last eight years will be dropped and a new team will come in and change that instead of building on it. So of you have built your programme and strategy, you have to go back to the drawing board and change it and that isn’t good for businesses. So being able to sustain some of the things that are good and not throw the baby alongside the bath water and being intentional about the needs of private businesses is what I also think the government can do at the other end.
What advice do you have for the new ministers of health?
We want to partner with them all the way in designing their strategy, reviewing, refining what they have. However, the advice that I’d give the new ministers is that they should try to keep things a bit stable. A lot of things have suffered because of instability. There are programmes that are still running and so instead of total scrap, they should try to keep and maintain some of those programmes be they on nutrition, maternal/child health, HIV and others. Before making any drastic changes, it will be good to review them extensively, look at their merits, demerits, and where things need to be improved, such should be done and the not too good ones can be removed based on data. In emphasizing the data part because before any decision is made, it will be good to be data-centric in terms of how the decisions are made. Sometimesit’s easy to make quick decisions, but what is the data saying? What is research saying? How much evidence has been gathered before deciding on how to modify or cancel or create new things?Being able to ensure that for every decision that is made, as they come in and start making their own effort to improve the country is backed and based on evidence and this is something that will be very helpful as they come in.
What advice do you have for individuals and groups who want to start up organisations such as yours?
Nigeria is a difficult place, but don’t give up. Stay true to yourself; don’t let the surroundings dictate how far you can go. When we started, people laughed, they mocked, but stay true and stay consistent- consistency that will eventually shine through. A lot of people that come as stars quickly fade. The ability to shine and keep shining is what eventually gets you to a point where the world can’t help but to see.