Beyond health ministers’ resignation

Prof. Adenike Grange

The recent resignation of the Minister of Health, Prof. Adenike Grange, and the Minister of State in the ministry, Mr. Gabriel Aduku, over corruption charges is another sad reminder of the evil effect of that monster on the development of Nigeria. Their resignation followed the discovery that some officials shared N300m unspent 2007 budget of the ministry. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives Committees on Health allegedly collected N10m each from the money for a capacity building trip to Ghana and for their oversight functions. The Federal Government has since suspended about 11 officials implicated in the scam.

This scandal is a reflection of the decay in the public service. It has shown how some civil servants enrich themselves with votes allocated for development. The looting of unspent budget allocations has become so entrenched that the officials had to defy a presidential order that all ministries, departments and agencies of the Federal Government should return all unspent votes from the 2007 budget to the treasury. That was a clear case of insubordination. The officials also seem to have allowed greed to becloud their sense of professionalism.

The deliberate violation of the Appropriation Act is not limited to the health ministry. The rot in the public service has turned due process and financial regulations upside down. Those who are supposed to uphold the system are the ones subverting it. Those who should act as checks on the system, as revealed in the Health Ministry’s scam, have been compromised. The auditors, accountants and other official gate-keepers have let the nation down.

This type of situation has persisted because there has been no proper annual auditing of public accounts. It is also a sad development that the National Assembly committees, which should supervise these ministries, end up collecting money from them. The Senate, under the leadership of Senator Adolphus Wabara, was also accused of collecting N50m bribe to pass the budget of the Education Ministry. Can the lawmakers, under this atmosphere, be trusted to carry out their oversight functions without fear or favour?

The Health ministry’s scam blew open because somebody felt aggrieved over the sharing formula and then decided to reveal the deal. Interestingly, Grange has absolved herself of blame in the crisis. She only accepted responsibility because the incident happened under her leadership. The relevant agencies handling this matter should give Grange, and indeed, all suspects, an opportunity to prove their innocence and defend their integrity in the court of law. In other words, they should be duly prosecuted.

It is time Nigerians confronted the challenge corruption poses to the nation’s development. The Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission, Justice Emmanuel Ayoola, noted recently that the war on corruption could only be won if an effective systemic vigilance mechanism was put in place. This presupposes, among others, that all Nigerians must wake up to fight corruption to a standstill. Rather than allow the monster to rear its head and destroy the country, Nigerians should aim at preventing it from occurring in the first place.

One major way of doing this is to reform the civil service. It is long overdue. The National Assembly should also pass the Freedom of Information Bill so as to enable the citizens to ask more questions about the spending of public funds. The various anti-graft agencies should redouble their efforts in combating corruption. Other ministries should be thoroughly investigated. Whoever is found culpable for misappropriating budget votes should be dealt with according to the law. Meting adequate punishment to corrupt offenders will go a long way in putting a stop to the malaise.