All sectors of the economy are beginning to feel the impact of the devaluation of the naira, which has lost over 20 per cent of value since last year.
Financial markets cringe as investors pull out. Manufacturers struggle. Cargo traffic at the ports has dropped significantly. The prices of pharmaceutical products have risen sharply.
Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) Chairman, Olumide Akintayo, tells Assistant Business Editor, KELECHI MGBOJI, in this interview that the devaluation of the naira opens the door to more diseases and deaths as the cost of healthcare rises.
Impact of naira devaluation on pharmaceutical sector
This development is most unfortunate because this is an import-dependent economy. As an import-dependent economy, it is a statement of fact that the prices of all goods, not only drugs, will naturally soar.
Since the devaluation, I can confirm to you that drug prices have risen. The full effect has not manifested yet, but in another one month, effectively there will be an average 25 per cent increase in the prices of drugs in Nigeria.
For a country where poverty continues to be very rampant, this is an open invitation to more deaths, more of disease severity and morbidity. It is an indication that health indices might worsen because we must live within the realm of reality.
The resources available to the government are dwindling. So the government cannot sustain the little it was doing in the past. And you know, the private sector, because there is an element of profit that must be made to sustain services, must also live in tandem with economic reality. It portends very grave danger to our nation.
We can only plead that our economic managers should do all that is possible to make the necessary adjustments so that life can be a little more meaningful to the citizens of this country.
Huge recurrent expenditure
One of the major tragedies of our national life is that the government has not conducted a few things with the requisite wisdom that you would expect. Public sector expenditure on wages appears to be one of the things that continues to ruin the country.
I am in possession of records that show that in a five-year period between 2009 and 2014 the Budget Office said public sector expenditure on wages and salary shot up by over a 100 per cent, from an already high figure of N890 billion to a very significant N1.18 trillion.
Any nation that continues to work on that path is headed for a crash. That is what happened in Greece. In that country today, the picture is gloomy. I don’t know where a country like Nigeria wants to run to.
The government must bring the finest brains to engender a workable version of this numerous PPP (Public-Private Project) initiatives. The government needs to cut down on public sector expenditure.
We are not running any sensible budget. Check out our budgets, they are usually about recurrent expenditure being very high and capital expenditure being very insignificant.
Health sector wastes resources
One area of waste is the health sector. I say it with all sense of responsibility. We have 55 federal health institutions. We have a preponderance of over 10,000 consultants in federal health institutions. What are they doing? Go and find out how these things work in other climes.
In a city like Lagos, you can have one surgeon consulting for different days for almost all the federal health institutions. If he is in LASUTH (Lagos State University Teaching Hospital) today, he can be in LUTH (Lagos University Teaching Hospital) tomorrow. He can be in the Federal Health Centre, Ebute-Meta. He can be in Igbobi, or the Psychiatric Hospital.
But what we have is that once somebody is a lecturer, he creates jobs for the boys. It is the economy that suffers for it because it is a booty for the boys. We have health institutions where consultants have not conducted 10 surgical procedures in a three-year period.
So, why is the government paying millions to this type of employees? This is where it starts from. They need to be a lot more pragmatic. I feel strongly that the government needs to privatise some of these things, not only in the healthcare sector but also generally.
This kind of suggestion is not palatable to some people but we need to strike a balance between efficiency, productivity and creating employment for the boys. So, the government needs to look into so many things.
Political appointees as drain pipes
Political appointees are also killing the nation economically. The salaries and benefits National Assembly members, ministers and other political appointees enjoy are unsustainable.
The country cannot continue this way. There has to be a total restructuring to stop so much waste. This is not a burden a weak leadership can tackle. It requires a bold leader with guts to tackle the problem.
Implementation of new guidelines on drug distribution
On paper, it is good. There is no policy or guideline, whatever you call it, that is good or bad ab initio. It is usually a function of implementation. How are you implementing it?
Look at what is going on around. The government and all the politicians are only busy politicking. Nobody is driving anything that can add value to life or anything else.
Even with the government postponing the implementation of the drug guidelines from the original date of June 30, 2014 to June 30, 2015 you can still see clearly that the government is not ready. There is no way they can be ready by the new date.
If things work out the way they are expected, the change of baton will not take place until May 29. If you have a new administration, there is no way it can meet the new target date which is about 30 days away from the date of the inauguration of a new government.
So, I think the government is not ready. Because the government is not ready, it takes a toll on the private sector. We are clamouring for mega drug distribution, that requires huge money. No serious investor will sink billions of naira into a system where there are infiltrators and unlawful players. They will mess you up.
The government will have to tidy up the environment to create a saner environment. They need to make the environment a lot more decorous, conducive for running this business as it is done in other countries.
Result of JOHESU strike
The strike was suspended in February after President Goodluck Jonathan met with the leadership of JOHESU three times in 10 days. The president said all your demands will be met, but give me some time because of the peculiar situation the country is facing.
It appears his lieutenants never presented some of the critical demands before him, particularly the one concerning the CONESS. The minister never drew his attention to this particular demand, which was in the agreement we had when we met with the minister on December 22.
So, we suspended the strike out of respect for the president. More so, the rate of mortality and morbidity was high because of the total shutdown.
It was a strike that paralysed the health sector, the state and federal government health institutions. Membership of JOHESU constitutes over 95 per cent of the workforce of the health sector in the country.
Strike may resume if Abuja fails to deliver
The strike was suspended in deference to the president after our meeting with him and he assured that our demands would be met. Our first strike was in January 2014 and the government promised that all our demands would be met. In 2014 alone, we had 14 different meetings with the government on these demands.
These demands had been pending since 2009, they are products of 2009 collective bargain agreement. Out of those 14 meetings, 11 were under the auspices of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius Anyim.
If you have negotiated at the level of the president of a nation, and he appealed to you saying please take it easy, I will meet all your demands, even if you don’t trust him, you give him a chance to intervene. That’s the phase we are in now.
That is why we keep emphasising that the strike was only suspended, it was not called off. If the government fails to do what it is supposed to do, we will consult stakeholders and do the needful.
National Health Bill, good starting point
I led the delegation of PSN to the Senate President, David Mark, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal. At some other critical moments, I had to go back to meet the leadership of the National Assembly, and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health to champion the cause of health workers.
The equalisation principle demands that we cannot continue to run a healthcare system designed to consign some people permanently to inferior status.
One of the grand designs of our medic friends was to attempt through the back door to circumvent and negate the regulatory functions of all other professional agencies by trying to come up with Section 11 of the National Health Bill which talks about a national health system that will regulate and control the totality of health services. Of course it was not acceptable to us.
We must thank the National Assembly for redressing that, because the final version of the bill that was transmitted to them clearly put safeguards that said “without prejudice to existing status.” That takes care of all our apprehensions.
For the very first time, we had a Health Act or an Act of Parliament that opens the borders of restriction in the healthcare sector because membership of salient platforms like the National Council on Health and various committees of the Council on Health had full representation of the professional associations.
In some other instances, some of the committees we had are health trade unions. It could be better but at least it is a much better document. It is a fair departure from the status quo.
All those instances of saying the headship of agencies is vested in only one profession were done away with. That makes the National Health Bill, to a very large extent, a very good document. It is a good starting point.
We will try and consolidate the gains of the very present document. I must commend the leadership of the National Assembly and all those great guys in the Parliament who made this to happen.
How PSN feels about Jimi Agbaje’s governorship ambition
Let me first establish without any doubt or controversy that on this platform of PSN, we are not partisan. We are certainly non-partisan; neither for the APC (All Progressives Congress) nor the PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) or any other party.
But as professionals, PSN has always encouraged its members to embrace national politics. If you understand the way our country runs, a time was when people talked about the need to, in fact the necessity to, be in the corridors of power.
It has gone beyond being in the corridors of power. You must be in the bedroom and in the living room of power these days to make things happen. That is why some professions these days excel more than others.
It is a very good development. We actually had a pharmacist who was a presidential aspirant in the APC, Sam Ndah-Isaiah. He is a product of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), a 1983 graduate of pharmacy.
Yes, when we talk of Jimi Agbaje, he is a quintessential patriotic pharmacist, that is the way I see him. He has recorded so many firsts. By all standards, he is a very good export. He is certainly one of our best exports. We say this with a very deep sense of responsibility and conviction.
He is one of the very great managers of men and resources. I can tell you that, having worked with him all my life – way back about 20 years ago, he was the Chairman of our state branch in Lagos and I was the Secretary under his watch.
Working with Agbaje was very fantastic; the confidence and team spirit that people like us have learnt to work with were actually a creation of that relationship.
Beyond pharmacy, Agbaje is an entrepreneur. When people portray him as one who runs retail pharmacy I just laugh at their ignorance. Agbaje has interest well beyond the frontiers and borders of pharmacy.
As far back as 1990, he was one of the major shareholders of one of Nigeria’s most successful banks, GT Bank. He has interest in other areas like oil and gas, power, insurance, and everywhere.
He has also had significant presence in the public sector, both at state and national levels. He is on record as one of the longest serving members of the governing council of the PCN (Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria), the agency of the government that regulates and controls pharmaceutical practice in all its forms and ramifications.
He is one of the members of the Essential Drug List Committee of Nigeria, the creation of Decree 43 of 1989. It is now Cap 289 LFN 1990. He is also a former member of the Federal Taskforce, and former member of Lagos State Taskforce.
He was once a full time member of Hospitals Management Board in Lagos State. So, when people say he does not have any public sector experience, I feel it is out of deep-seated ignorance. All his life, he tries to strike that balance between public and private sector experience.
A Jimi Agbaje leadership in Lagos will come with a huge benefit to the residents of this state.