Public Officers To Face Jail Term For Foreign Treatment

Hello everyone,it's been a while... hope you all are having a great day. Today I finally had some breathing space from school activities and with all this talk of strike circulating. So we'll be discussing the new law that could be passed in a couple of days or months, depending on how fast it's implemented.

This new bill is seeking to place a seven year jail term and/or a fine of ₦500 million for government or public officials who spend public funds on foreign medical trips. This bill has just passed a second reading at the house of representatives on Wednesday, 9th of February, 2022.

This was proposed by Lawmaker, Sergius Ogun (Edo, PDP), this new legislation is titled, 'A bill for an act to amend the National Health Act, 2014.'

Ogun stated that the purpose of this law was to was to amend the act so as to make provision for punishments against any public officer that violates it.

The section reads, “Without prejudice to the right of any Nigerian to seek medical check-up, investigation or treatment anywhere within and outside Nigeria, no public officer of the government of the federation or any part thereof shall be sponsored for medical check-up, investigation or treatment abroad at public expense, except in exceptional cases on the recommendation and referral by the medical board and which recommendation and referral shall be duly approved by the minister or commissioner of Health of the state as the case may be”.

Ogun said, "This bill, which seeks to amend the National Health Act, is born out of a desire to discourage medical treatment abroad at the detriment of our indigenous health institutions. The need to revamp the poor state of the health care sector in Nigeria, among other things, is the reason for introducing this bill."

It is no news that Nigeria’s health care system is in a deplorable state and needs urgent attention. There is paucity of infrastructure, death of medical personnel, poor standards and many other challenges that need to be addressed. The intent of this bill is to spur public officers to pay more attention to our health care sector and take drastic steps to develop and improve on the sector.

Ogun noted that the Act prohibited unapproved spending of government funds on foreign medical services, but it failed to prescribe punishment for disobeying the law.

This is actually a very good one because it will help reduce the massive exodus of medical doctors to the overseas. It will reduce the excessive spendings that these public officials spend on medical trips outside the country.

It would be beneficial to the health sector because when these high earning public officers have no choice but to patronise the local hospitals, they will be forced to ensure the development of these hospitals so that they can receive the first class treatment that they are seeking for abroad.

All of this cash, which flies abroad in the disguise of one medical trip or the other, will be retained here in our country and be used to develop Nigeria.

I don't know if it will be possible to implement but I know most of us, especially those of us in public universities including me wish that this kind of bill was passed to restrict the children of these public officers from going abroad. This way they will be forced to pay attention to the educational sector that is currently falling apart.

Well, we will have to wait to see whether this new bill is passed or not, because it is still in process and this is Nigerian politics, it could end up in the bin. This already seems like a step in the right direction for now, let's see if they'll actually pull it off.

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Thank you for reading.