THE federal government has reversed the policy asking the Health Ministry to seek the approval of Agriculture Ministry for its procurement, other budgetary entitlement and other financial needs.
Prior to the new development, the health ministry had to go through the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development for procurement and funding, a development that is described by many in the government circle as surreal.
This, according to reports, became so because of the power tussle between the erstwhile Health Minister Prof Isaac Adewole and the late Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyariealth minister.
The policy affected the effectiveness of the Health ministry with about 119 agencies, as the additional bureaucratic strain occassioned by the policy put a clog in the wheel of the ministry and hampered its operations.
Apart from its inability to procure what its needed, including stationeries, the ministry could not monitor and supervise its projects as all funds must be approved by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
More worrisome and seemingly incongruous is the fact that the Health ministry had to get approvals from the Agriculture ministry to access N10.5 billion approved for the funding of its capital expenditure in last year’s bugdet.
But this is about to change, a senior government official who spoke with The Nation said that the Health ministry can now handle all its contracts and procurements without the ‘unnatural’ routing through the Agriculture ministry.
According to the source, the Health ministry was asked to get approval from the ministry of Agriculture, following a power play between the erstwhile Health Minister Prof Isaac Adewole and the late Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari.
The source said: “One of the causes of friction (among others) between the duo was the Minister’s decision to suspend the then Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof. Usman Yusuf. However, the late Kyari later vetoed it.
“Whenever the Ministry of Health wants to make procurement, the Permanent Secretary (PS) would raise a memo which would be sent to the Permanent Secretary of the Agric ministry.
“In some instances, the PS (permanent secretary) of the Ministry of Agriculture would give direct approval while sometimes, he would write a memo to the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Procurement, Mamman Ahmadu, who would approve based on the Procurement Act.”
“The lifting of the ban will be of great benefits to the Ministry as it will bypass the administrative bottlenecks that could frustrate the immediate dispatch of responses or activities regarding procurement in government’s health establishments.”