The suspended Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Usman Yusuf, has said that the governing board of the Scheme has no right to suspend him.
DAILY POST recalls that chairman of the governing council, Enyatu Ifenne, on Thursday last week suspended Yusuf indefinitely to allow a panel set up by the council to investigate allegations of fraud and misconduct against him.
However, the suspended NHIS executive Secretary stirred a protest on Monday by some workers acting under the aegis of Association of Civil Servants of Nigeria, and Medical and Health Workers Union of NHIS when he showed up at the scheme’s premises to resume office despite the suspension.
But, on Tuesday, Yusuf, while speaking with BBC Hausa Service, said the governing board had no right to suspend him especially because he had notified the board that it lacked the constitutional right to suspend him.
According to him, “The governing board has no right to suspend me as the Executive Secretary. I notified them in a written document that they lack constitutional rights to suspend or even block me from entering my office.
On the allegation of fraud against him, Yusuf described them as false and plots to intimidate him.
“From the country I came from, if you say someone is a thief, you have to prove that. But since I came on board, I have being going through unnecessary accusations of fraud.
“They’re doing that just to intimidate and stop me from doing my good work. They have failed, I will never succumb to their ploy, I think they have to change plan.
“I told everyone when I came on board that the public funds in the commission belong to Nigerians, no one should tamper with that money, including myself. “If I’m corrupt, EFCC and ICPC are currently recovering billions of naira from my whistleblowing in the commission and I have never been indicted by the anti-corruption agencies.
“My ordeal as the Executive Secretary of NHIS may be connected with NHIS agents who think that I stepped on their toes and you know these people are powerful and they are well established in the previous administration.
“Those NHIS agents, I told them to pay back their debts which has already run to billions of naira. After the initial investigation, I learnt that so many abnormalities need to be corrected.”
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