THE NHIS: THE UNTOLD STORY

BY Adeyanju Demi

"I never thought a day will come when I will have to agree with any decision Buhari has taken. On the
NHIS thing, I regretfully have to admit that he was right.

We had all condemned the reinstatement of the NHIS Boss who was accused of corruption.
NHIS started functioning in 2005. It's 13yrs old this year.

NHIS covers 3 million Nigerians. It’s about Health Care but, because of corruption, the agency has not
performed well. Politicians turned NHIS into an ATM.

Let Me Explain:
HMOs -Health Maintenance ORG’s, all private companies owned by politicians, are the real problem of NHIS. They are middle men between
NHIS and the hospitals. They have enthroned corruption to another level in the place.

The HMOs receive money from NHIS on behalf of the people to pay hospitals so that Nigerians on the
NHIS scheme can enjoy medical services, but they refuse to pay the hospitals and corner the money.
NHIS gives the HMOs 3 months in advance to pay hospitals but they were not paying.

What They Do With The NHIS Money:

A. They fix it in banks to accrue interest.

B. They buy forex And do trading with it.

C. They take loans using it as collateral.

When banks know you are getting massive funds from NHIS, they give you 10 times the amount in your account.

So instead of the HMOs to pay the hospitals as agreed on time, they are heavily indebted to all
hospitals nationwide, thereby  crippling healthcare services nationwide. They owe National Hospital alone N400million.

It’s A Major Cartel:

There are 57 HMOs. They are the cartel at NHIS. They work hand in hand with every Minister of
Health, Board Members, the Executive Secretary(EX)
& politicians in government to run the place to the ground.

Evidently, this new EX refused to play ball & they declared war on him.
Someone early this year contacted me from NHIS that the EX is destroying the agency, etc and that
they were appealing to my organization to come to
their rescue. I told him I needed to do my due diligence but I never did. We all joined later to
crucify the man.

So just last week I coincidently ran into a friend that
works at NHIS and he started briefing me of all the dirty things going on there. It’s really depressing.
The things I heard made me wonder if this country can ever be great.
I will explain all that is going on there.

So this EX appointed by Buhari came and found out that there was massive corruption going on at NHIS
& he wanted to stop it but the cartel “HMOs” declared war on him. The HMOs said he can’t stop
the norm & teamed up with politicians in Buhari’s
government to start fighting him.
The HMOs got the support of the Board Chairman of NHIS and other members of the Board who are
all politicians. Got the support of the Minister of Health & other politicians. What was the crime of
this EX guy? He wanted to block where politicians are eating.

The issue they had with the EX guys were:

They were not paying hospitals.
Many of their licenses had expired since 2013 & he was asking them to renew before they get
disbursements of money, etc.
One of the conditions the EX guy gave was that every HMOS must go to the hospitals to get a letter
of non indebtedness signed by the CMD before they will get funds from the agency.

The hospitals were happy with the new development but HMOs were unhappy. The NHIS is  strategically important to Nigerians. In a working country, every citizen should be
captured in the scheme. NHIS pays Federal, State & even private hospitals through HMOs. Nigerians on the scheme are the main beneficiaries.

Many workers are on the scheme. NHIS also pay Military & Police hospitals nationwide. The police
alone have over 800k officers and their dependents on the scheme.

The Ministry of Health and politicians are the
number 1 problem of NHIS in Nigeria. They use
NHIS as an ATM. Because the EX guy stopped them, he was suspended on allegations of
corruption which many of us believed because of
media trial. EFCC then investigated him.The reason he was reinstated was because EFCC did not find him wanting according to my friend that
works there. He said after his reinstatement, the EX
guy became tougher on the HMOs and the Board & the Minister began to plot his removal again.

The EX guy was just suspended again on the eve of delisting many unqualified HMOS. A Pre-emptive
move by the NHIS Board & the Minister. The union is also on the payroll of the HMOs.

The HMOs are the real cartel at NHIS. HMOs were angry that the EX instituted a forensic
audit of NHIS finances. Audit discovered that N46billion of NHIS money were stashed away  in different banks. These are people’s money. The HMOs
say the EX is using EFCC, CBN, AG, Accountant General & Asset Recovery to fight them.

Our national & State hospitals are under funded and many of them survive on the NHIS money. For
instance, FMC Asaba got only about N18million from the budget last year & they require over N10million to power the hospital with diesel. So
how will they survive without NHIS funding?

So if the HMOs take money from NHIS and refuse to give the hospitals, they are destroying our health sector. The Union, the Board and the Ministry of Health should stop the rubbish they are doing to
cripple our health sector.

We @ConcernedNIG will come into this matter fully.