...Asks Health Minister to Quit With His Name Intact
Or Be Disgraced
Civil rights organisation, Human Rights Writers
Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has said President Muhammadu Buhari’s action in
the reinstatement of the suspended Executive Secretary of the National Health
Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Usman Yusuf, is a crude fashion of overruling the
anti-graft crusade and “a text book example of political hypocrisy and nepotism
that have characterised Buhari's administration.”
It stated this against the recent announcement
of the overruling of the ministerial panel suspending NHIS executive secretary
just as the group criticised the minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, for
celebrating “naked hypocrisy by his unsustainable defence of the recall of a
man who allegedly mismanaged an amount twice the amount for which Chief Olisa
Metuh is being witch hunted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).”
HURIWA in a statement issued by its National
Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss
Zainab Yusuf, on Sunday lamented that the current administration has openly demonstrated
an unabashed partisan and one-sided war against graft “which is meant to carry
out well coordinated political witch hunt of political opposition leaders even
when the same government has continued to condone acts of alleged theft of
public fund such as the recalled Executive Secretary of the NHIS.”
The group also asked the Health Minister, Professor
Isaac Adewole, to resign honourably and engage in other productive functions
outside of an administration that has lampooned his sense of judgment in the
matter involving his subordinate or stay back and “watch as he will be
disgraced for his courage to suspend a suspected distanced first cousin of
President Buhari for alleged
mismanagement of public fund under the administration.
"We have it on good authority that the
reinstated NHIS boss is a cousin of Buhari which explained why he bluntly
disrespected the minister when he was given the matching order. We were told
that the powerful cabal within the presidency was actually instrumental to his
unmeritorious appointment to head the strategic institution with a lot of slush
funds such as the dysfunctional national health insurance scheme. These
powerful persons in the presidency who made sure that their man is recalled
will disgrace the health minister who almost marred their plots to control the
huge funds available in the coffers of NHIS."
HURIWA recalled that Yusuf was suspended by the Minister
of Health in June 2017 following allegations of gross misconduct in addition to
him being found guilty of alleged offences that ranged from nepotism to theft
of public funds.
It therefore criticised President Buhari for not considering Yusuf’s heavy indictment by a ministerial panel
before asking him to return to work “even as his administration has consistently
misled Ibrahim Magu-led EFCC to go after members of political opposition in a
bid to recover cash the then ruling party raised and spent as presidential
campaign fund but APC which wrest power from PDP and outspent PDP is not being
investigated over how it managed to put together the unimaginable huge
financial war power in 2015.”
According to HURIWA, “It is only in a Banana
Republic that such lawless action would be taken by the president who simply
sent the letter of reinstatement to his health minister, Adewole, which
amounted to a show of shame. It is also a huge humiliation that the health
minister was caught napping but simply confirmed receipt of the reinstatement
letter, by simply saying: ‘It is true that the president has reinstated him’.”
It however carpeted President Buhari for hurriedly reinstating
a man that was indicted of such grave financial wrongdoings.
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