NHIS clears air on status of its account

By Kemi Yesufu

The National Health Insurance Scheme has clarified the status of it’s account, stating that like  other Federal Government agencies, all of its funds is domiciled in the Treasury Single Account.

Public Relations Officer of the NHIS, Mr. Ayo Osinlu, explained in a statement sent to Frontline News Online on Sunday, that it was a Health Management Organisation (HMO) that was defrauded and not his agency. HMOs work with service providers, mostly hospitals to provide healthcare to enrollees.

However, Osinlu stated that the NHIS will look into the case of fraud in the HMO due the huge amount involved.

The statement read in part:  “The discovery of fraud in the operations of one of the Health Maintenance Organisations (HMO), Clearline International Limited, leading to the arrest of two persons, one of whom is a staff of the HMO concerned, has come to the attention of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). The seriousness of this crime, the huge sum of money involved.

“NHIS has no account anywhere else outside the Federal Government’s Treasury Single Account (TSA) in the custody of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). It is therefore not possible, or true, that the perpetrators of this heinous crime hacked into the account of NHIS in this act, in the spirit of the Scheme’s ongoing rebranding reforms, of which transparency and accountability is a major factor, a management committee has been constituted the day after the crime was reported, to ascertain the veracity of the allegations, the actual sum involved and the circumstances that facilitated the commission of the crime, among other terms of reference”.

The NHIS spokesman assured that the agency will not tolerate any breach of trust or guidelines under its operations, even as it remains committed to ongoing reforms aimed at repositioning the NHIS into a result-oriented and socially-responsible public institution.

Recall that Punch last Tuesday, reported that a former staff of Clearline International Limited, Funmilayo Oyelaja, was arrested by men of the Lagos Police command for allegedly siphoning N60m from the “National Health Insurance Scheme’s”,  account while working for the firm in Lagos.

Oyelaja’s lover, Tunde Ogunseye, was also arrested for conniving with her to flee the country when the company was looking for her to account for the stolen fund.