There is no question on the prerogative of the President to hire and fire any head of government agency or parastatal but accountability and a sense of duty demand that reasons for such actions be given, to the ultimate employers of both the President and his appointees, namely, the Nigerian people. Respect demands no less. The chief executive officers of the five Federal Ministry of Health agencies, who were summarily dismissed from their posts last Thursday, may have earned the sack but true to type, the Presidency gave no reasons, and the result has been wild speculations which then painted the Buhari administration as reckless and more than confused about basic human resource management. There has to be a better way to sack high public office holders. Unless their offences were so egregious as to deserve public humiliation, and in which case such offences should be made public; the President’s action neither showed consideration for the sacked officials nor respect for their positions.
As if that was not bad enough, the controversial decision was announced not by the President’s special adviser on media and publicity; nor the Minister of Information. Rather the sacked CEOs learnt of their fate from the Attorney General of the Federation after a meeting between President Buhari and a team from the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria and Global Vaccine Initiative (GAVI). The affected CEOs and their agencies are: Prof. John Idoko; National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA); Dr. Ado Gana Muhammad; National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA); Prof. Innocent Ujah; Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) Lagos; Dr. Abdulsalami Nasidi; Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and Mr. Olufemi Akingbade of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
All the agencies were thrown into confusion, but the chaos was typified at the National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) where it remained unclear why the agency head had been conspicuously left out, though he held office without a pedigree in the Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria, whereas NAFDAC Law demands that the director general must be someone who has been practicing as a registered member of the council for a minimum of five years.
As the public was digesting the news of the sack of the heads of the five critical health agencies, Buhari approved the appointment of new CEOs. The press director in the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Bolaji Adebiyi, in a statement, announced the new helmsmen as: Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu (NCDC); Dr. Sani Aliyu (NACA); Prof. Babatunde Lawal Salako (NIMR); Prof. Echezona Ezeanolue (NPHCDA) and Prof. Usman Yusuf as new Executive Secretary of NHIS. The public expectation was that the appointment of the replacements would follow due process and respect extant laws and statutes. Without any prejudice to the academic and professional pedigree of the new CEOs, it is heart-warming that all of them were trained in Nigeria before they travelled abroad for greener pastures.
Ihekweazu was before the appointment, the Managing Partner of EpiAfric, a public health consultancy firm. He obtained his medical degree at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and worked in Germany, Britain and South Africa. Aliyu got his medical degree from ABU; Zaria before moving to Cambridge, where he is currently a Consultant in Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at Cambridge University. Salako is currently the Provost at the University of Ibadan College of Medicine, where he graduated. He is also a fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians in both Edinburg and London. Ezeanolue is currently a Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, (USA). He got his medical degree at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Yusuf is currently a Professor of Pediatrics at St. Jude Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. He graduated in medicine from ABU.
Granted, the sacked officials held their jobs at the pleasure of the president, to recourse to such mass dismissals, without reason, indicate the President either judged poorly; was wrongly advised or was so confounded by the undesirability of the officials and contemptuous of due process! In which case, they should have been quietly asked to resign or, if they would be so summarily dismissed, reasons should have been made public as some of those affected were under investigation by the EFCC after a report from the Office of the Inspector General of the Global Fund accused them of financial misappropriation and systemic inefficiency.
An inexplicable dismissal of five agency heads responsible for the nation’s healthcare delivery system obviously defeats the idea that all public officers are accountable to the public, which is the intendment of the constitution. Failure to do this very simple right thing has given room for speculation, which exposes the government to even bigger ridicule. The standing view is that the President merely sacrificed the five agency heads after the team from GAVI and the Global Fund insisted that they be sacked as a condition for resumed funding of suspended health projects in the country, including the Global Fund HIV grants to NACA.
It is alright that the officials have been sacked, though ignominiously, but to say Buhari was not expecting the reaction that greeted the sackings is to underestimate the political sagacity of the President whose recent actions have continued to confound even his most ardent critics and detractors. More importantly, it must be asked: have the right lessons been learnt? Has the President set a template which should therefore not require a dramatic event before officials are fired in the future? Nigerians have drawn parallels to the earlier mass sacking of 26 heads of parastatals and agencies, who were summarily dismissed by the President in similarly spectacular fashion.
Public office is a call to national duty and only the ready, willing, and able deserve it. Nigeria’s
Health agencies have certainly suffered a serial debasement of values, desecration of ethics and, especially, erosion of professionalism exemplified by corruption, crass incompetence and flagrant disregard for rules and regulations. A re-orientation and renaissance, therefore, is a necessity if the health sector, which includes these agencies, would run smoothly and efficiently. In appointments into high public office, arbitrariness and the accompanying invidious mutilation of due process does little credit to the president’s image.
Though appointees of the president, the allegiance of holders of high public office ought not to be to the person that appointed him; it is to the country. To hire and fire top functionaries in the manner in which the president has been doing is a disservice to the country. The rot in the country’s healthcare system is mind-boggling. It is a decline, which must be arrested if Nigeria’s future would not be jeopardized. Nigeria needs to take the bold redemptive step to save its health sector and the future of the country. Nigeria must create an environment to attract highly qualified persons who have excelled abroad as experts and specialists in every field. The choice in this, of course, is that of the President. Needless to say how well his appointees perform will determine his own report card as well as his place in history.
