AFRO-NETS> President Obasanjo names Special Advisers - none for health

["A. Odutola" <chpss_abo2@yahoo.com>]

President Obasanjo names Special Advisers - none for health 
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Datelinehealth-Africa News Service
30 June 2003-06-30
Logos, Nigeria

President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria has named fifteen special advis-
ers to serve him, with none for health. The appointments were made exa-
ctly one month after assuming office as President on May 29 2003 for a 
second four-year term.

Obasanjo named special advisers for: 
* Petroleum and energy 
* Political matters 
* Ethics and good governance 
* Constitutional and Legal affairs  
* Non-party relations  
* Relations with civil society 
* Manufacturing and private sector 
* National assembly affairs 

Others are for: 
* Inter-party affairs 
* African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) 
* Cultural Affairs and Traditional matters 
* Programmes and Policy monitoring 
* Informal sector o Economic and  
* Media

The appointment of advisers for national security, budget, small and me-
dium enterprises were considered statutory and non-special. An honorary 
special adviser was named for Agriculture.

Conspicuously absent from the list of special advisers is that of an ad-
viser to the president on health. 

Nigeria's health status is adjudged by many of its citizens as extremely 
unsatisfactory and ranked by the World Health Organisation as among the 
poorest fifty in the world.

Contacted to comment on the non-appointment of a special adviser for 
health to the President, a public health specialist and lecturer in one 
of Nigeria's medical colleges said on condition of anonymity: "...but this 
should not surprise any one. Obasanjo is his own adviser on health mat-
ters". 

Continuing, the health specialist elaborated, "recall that in his first 
term, he simply sent his health minister on an errand to procure anti-
retroviral drugs from a company in India for the free treatment programme 
of HIV patients. This programme took well over nine months to take-off 
after the drugs arrived in Nigeria because of lack of prior planning and 
proper professional advice. Also recall the peculiar manner of award of 
a $100 million dollar contract or is it Euro contract for the refurbish-
ment of teaching hospitals in the country to a single contractor under 
circumstances that sidelined the professionals in the hospitals and also 
sidelined established procurement procedures in each and every hospital. 
Boh, the president is his own special adviser on health."

President Obasanjo trained as an army engineer in India and became a vo-
cational chicken farmer on retirement after his long and meritorious 
service in the army and as a military head of state.

Dr. M.P. Otolorin who retired close to twenty years ago, last filled the 
position of Chief Medical Adviser to the Federal Government of Nigeria. 
No formal appointment has been made to that position since Otolorin's re-
tirement. 


A. Odutola 
Centre for Health Policy & Strategic Studies (CHPSS) 
Lagos, Nigeria 
mailto:chpss_abo@yahoo.com 
http://www.expage.com/chpsshomepage 
http://www.datelinehealth-africa.net
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