A member of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Prof Usman Yusuf, has been arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), SaharaReporters learned on Wednesday.
Sources told SaharaReporters that Yusuf was arrested by a large number of EFCC operatives who stormed his residence on Wednesday.
“A truckload of EFCC operatives stormed Prof Usman Yusuf’s residence and arrested him,” one of the sources said.
Yusuf, a former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, faced trouble during President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration following a petition submitted to the Presidency and the Federal Ministry of Health.
The petition, filed by a group, accused him of 12 counts of misconduct and fraudulent practices.
The allegations included misappropriation of funds, nepotism, misconduct, blatant disregard for higher authority, and the use of inappropriate language toward a senior officer.
Yusuf was accused of mismanaging N860 million allocated for training by the agency in 2016, blatantly disregarding procurement rules in awarding contracts for e-library equipment, granting a media consultancy contract to his brother, and colluding with the agency’s heads of finance and audit to authorize payments to contractors before goods were supplied.
Mr. Yusuf was also accused of violating regulations by granting financial assistance to an individual who was not enrolled in the NHIS while denying the same support to a staff member of the scheme, who later passed away.
Additionally, he was alleged to have approved N210 million for electronic media operations without following the proper procedures.
Additional allegations included exceeding the N2.5 million spending limit for the Executive Secretary without approval from the supervising ministry, facilitating the supply of fake and substandard products to the agency, inflating contract costs by over 100%, invoking then President Buhari’s name to justify disobedience to the Minister of Health, engaging in fraudulent practices in selecting an insurance broker for the scheme, and imposing a N7.2 million flat fee for the registration of Health Management Organizations (HMOs).
In May 2024, Yusuf said the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu had turned to hopelessness during an interview with Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.
According to him, instead of uplifting Nigerians with a sense of hope, the Tinubu administration has only deepened their despair over the past year.
He said, “People have lost hope. It pains me to see our people lining up to collect cups of palliatives. Renewed Hope has turned into hopelessness. People have lost hope. The last one year has been a year of nothing but deception, destitution and hopelessness.
“From next week, they will start telling us their propaganda. What have they done to benefit the ordinary people?
“In a span of one year, they have brought millions of people back into multidimensional poverty, they have pushed millions more children out of school because their parents cannot pay their school fees.”
Yusuf criticised the President’s economic management team, calling them “tax collectors” rather than “economists.”
According to him, Tinubu’s economic team “looks more like tax collectors than economists”.
“Taxation does not grow economy; only production does,” he said.
Efforts made by SaharaReporters to reach the EFCC spokesman, Dele Oyewale, failed as his mobile line was switched off.