There seems to be respite coming the way of the Ministry of Health as a federal policy requesting the Ministry to go through the Ministry of Agriculture for its procurement and other funding needs has been lifted.
The Health Ministry can now handle all its contracts and procurements without the ‘unnatural’ routing through the Agriculture ministry, a senior government official told The Nation.
According to reports, prior to the new adjustment, Health ministry with about 119 agencies, apart from its inability to make its own procurements, including stationeries, could not monitor its projects as all funds must be approved by the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
The policy affected the ministry’s ability to monitor the agencies under it.
Worsening the matter, 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.
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.”