Reports just received say that the Federal Government of Nigeria has mistakenly paid millions of Naira into the accounts of 588 doctors.
Dr Chris Ngige, Minister of Labour and Employment, made the revelation while responding to questions from State House Correspondents.
He said that names of beneficiaries of the wrongly paid amounts were uncovered during the “scrutinisation of 8000 names submitted by Chief Medical Directors of Federal Government health institutions for the training programme.“
The minister added that while some of the beneficiaries have willingly refunded the money, others are still being pressured to comply.
The development, he said has hampered the release of the Residency Fund meant to be paid to medical personnel.
According to him, “Ministry of Health has gotten the list of doctors who supposedly are to benefit from the medical Residency Training Fund.
“Total submission of about 8,000 names were gotten and the Ministry of Health is scrutinising them.
“We have done the first round of scrutinisation and they will now compare what they have with the Post-Graduate Medical College and the Chief Medical Directors who submitted the names.
“The Association of Resident Doctors in each of the tertiary centres, worked with the CMDS to produce those names but now the names are being verified.
“We discovered that about 2,000 names shouldn’t be there because they don’t have what is called Postgraduate Reference Numbers of National Postgraduate Medical College and (or) that of the West African Postgraduate Medical College.
“So, this is it and that is the only thing holding back the Residency Fund payment because it is there already for…incurred expenditure has been done by the Finance Minister and it’s in the Accountant General’s office.
Ngige added that “So once we verify the authenticity of those they are submitting, the Accountant General will pay.”
He said that thorough verification became necessary to avoid what happened in 2020.
According to him, “In 2020, the submitted names didn’t come through the appropriate source, which is the Postgraduate Medical College and payment was effected and it ws discovered that about 588 persons who were not resident doctors benefitted from such money.
“That account has to be reconciled to enable the accountants pay the next round of refunding for 2021,” Ngige said.
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JUST IN ! FG Mistakenly Paid Millions of Naira into Accounts of 588 Doctors
Ministry of Health