The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has returned the sum of N1, 550,000.000 to the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
In a statement on Friday, the Head, Media and Publicity, Wilson Uwujaren, said the money returned on February 10, was part of the fund which some commercial banks fraudulently withheld and refused to transmit to their Treasury Single Account (TSA), since 2015.
Uwujaren said the Commission had earlier on September 16, 2021 released N1, 300,000,000, also recovered from the banks to the NHIS.
Last August, a former Executive Secretary of the NHIS, Usman Yusuf, had said that the sum of N5.4 billion recovered by the EFCC, for the Scheme “is a tip of the iceberg, as there is still over N100 billion of similar funds trapped in Nigerian banks.”
Yusuf, a Professor of Haematology/Oncology who headed the Scheme from July 2016 to July 2019, expressed concern that “NHIS money was still held illegally in the vaults of commercial banks six years after the Federal Government of Nigeria directive to the contrary”