The former Executive Secretary of National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, Dr Femi Thomas has described as false and malicious, allegations of fraud in the purchase of a parcel of land at the Scheme’s office in Abuja. Dr Thomas was accused of conniving with others to inflate the cost of the property from N300 million to N990 million.

Dr. Femi Thomas, ex-NHIS boss

In a statement by his media aide, Mr Adeyemi Adesola, the former NHIS boss said: “When the management wanted to buy the land, as the practice, we called the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, and they sent their evaluation department to come and evaluate the property, and the report by the ministry put the value of the property at N1.5 billion. Beyond that level of due process, the purchase was approved by the ministerial tenders’ board because it was beyond the approving power of the NHIS’ Tenders Management Committee and the negotiation was so tight that we could not pay agency fee.”

He explained that the need to purchase the land was necessitated by the acute shortage of space as two or more staff were sharing a desk which may hamper operations and efficiency.

He further justified the purchase of the land by the fact that the land was a plot away from NHIS’s head office, which makes economic sense than having another headquarters extension in Gudu. He added that the management of NHIS believed the property was not a bad investment for the scheme.

He therefore condemned the allegation of fraud in the transaction saying it was a malicious attempt by a cabal in the system to destroy any Chief Executive of the scheme who is not ready to play ball and make it business as usual.

According to him, “there have always been efforts by a cabal in the system to frustrate every chief executive that attempted to run NHIS as a professional and profitable health insurance scheme, because some of them know that they are round pegs in square holes, and with time, if they don’t sit up, they may found themselves out of the service”.