The Osun State Governor, Ademola Adeleke, has approved the immediate suspension of the Executive Secretary of Osun Health Insurance Agency, Dr Niyi Oginni, and the Head of the Primary Health Care Development Board, Dr. Adebukola Olujide.
This was contained in a statement signed by the spokesperson for the governor, Olawale Rasheed, obtained in Osogbo on Saturday.
The governor also ordered an investigation into the Public Procurement Agency, generally known as the Due Process Office, to examine the extent of its involvement in non-remittance of tender fees to the state treasury and contract manipulation over the last four years.
Adeleke also instructed the Public Procurement Agency and other pertinent government agencies, according to the statement, to start the process right away to recover all unpaid tender fees on contract awards and Memorandums of Understanding to which the state has been a party in the previous four years.
The statement further read in part, “The suspension of the two chief executive officers was sequel to the interim report of the Committee on Contracts and MOU chaired by Hon Niyi Owolade, which indicted the two agency chiefs of gross abuse of office, mismanagement of public resources and serial violations of agency and public service regulations and laws.
“The Committee in its recommendation had unearthed the unethical practices of the suspended heads of the OSHIA and the Primary Health Care Board as manifested in contract awards without due process, non-remittance of actual tender fee collected from contractors, contracts without value for money like the PHCs, deliberate splitting of contracts.
“The Committee further found out that the suspended OHIS boss gave contracts to the tune of several millions of naira to his daughter and his private hospital in the agency he is heading, while the acting Career Head in the Primary Health Care lied on oath when she falsely denied knowledge of all contracts of infrastructures and supplies in the PHCs, resorting to bulk-passing and blame trading.”
