By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Jan. 1, 2016
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The widely reported arrest or “invitation” of the immediate past Director of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), the Kufuor-founded oversight agency for the National Health-Insurance Scheme (NHIS), also founded by the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Sylvester Mensah, on New Year’s Eve, requires ample public clarification. Mr. Mensah is also the former National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for La-Dadekotopon Constituency in the Greater-Accra Region (See “Revealed: Why BNI is Probing Ex-NHIA Boss” Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 1/1/16).

We are not directly told about the events and/or reasons leading to the arrest of Mr. Mensah, except that the Bureau of National Investigations, formerly the Special Branch of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) is looking into what appears to be gross financial improprieties in the period during which the former MP served as NHIA director. In the main, we are told that agents and other operatives of the BNI are focused on the processes by which healthcare providers, be they individual healthcare practitioners or public and private institutional entities, are granted accreditation by the NHIA to become eligible members of the National Health Insurance Scheme.

Even more importantly, the BNI operatives want to know how insurance claims from healthcare providers are calculated in cedis and pesewas and then presented to the administrators of the NHIS for processing and payment or disbursement. If this news report, as provided to the reading public by the media, has validity, then Mr. Mensah, the former NHIA boss, is clearly being investigated for what appears to border on the calculated and systematic embezzlement of funding earmarked for the smooth administration of the health-insurance scheme.

What is strange here, though, unless this aspect of the news event preceded the alleged arrest of the NHIA’s former boss, is the fact that to-date absolutely no mention has been made about the BNI’s having already picked up other present or former NHIA personnel who have been linked to the activities reported to be under scrutiny by the BNI. In other words, if any fraudulent activities transpired under the watch of the former NHIA boss, very likely it also involved a network of other staff members and/or NHIA appointees. [Note: As of this preparation for the press, another news item had freshly appeared reporting the arrest of some five NHIA employees linked to the fraudulent activities being allegedly investigated by the BNI].

And unless the criminal nature of whatever fraudulent activities occurred under the watch of the former NDC-MP for La-Dadekotopon was such as to promptly warrant the ham-handed approach adopted by the BNI, it is quite certain that a parliamentary enquiry would have been the first most appropriate method to take in our kind of democratic political culture. Needless to say, for a government that has invariably traveled the proverbial extra-mile to protect such common criminals as Mr. Stanislav Dogbe, the notorious street-brawling Flagstaff House hanger-on, it is very likely that the ham-fisted approach taken by the BNI vis-à-vis Mr. Mensah’s tenure and stewardship at the NHIA unmistakably reflects the chilly relationship between the target of scrutiny and both the NDC party headquarters and the Flagstaff House.

What is significant here, in the long run, is that the requisite level of probity and accountability is brought to bear on the administrative culture of both the National Health Insurance Scheme and its supervisory/oversight agency, the National Health Insurance Authority. What is also interesting to recall here is the fact that when then-Candidate John Agyekum-Kufuor first proposed the establishment of a National Health Insurance Scheme, his principal political opponents among the vanguard ranks of the then-ruling National Democratic Congress promptly pooh-poohed the entire proposal as one that was both unrealistic and impracticable. And, of course, these cynical naysayers included then Vice-President John Evans Atta-Mills, who also doubled as flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress, and the latter’s arch-lieutenant and presently presidential incumbent John Dramani Mahama. These two men would also be among the first Ghanaian leaders to jockey to the front row of potential beneficiaries of the Kufuor-minted National Health Insurance Scheme!

In our time, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the 2016 Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, has bitterly and publicly decried the pathologically corrupt and grossly incompetent manner in which the National Health Insurance Scheme has generally been administered by those who most vehemently impugned its viability from day one. One hopes that something meaningful and constructive comes out of the ongoing investigations into the operations of the NHIS/NHIA by the BNI.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs.