Speech at the Launching of the PTF/Drug Revolving Fund Schemes,
December 16, 1996

We are grateful to the Almighty God for making it possible for all of us here to witness the national launching of the PTF assisted Drug Revolving Programme in the ancient city of Kano. Today’s event represents the culmination of a series of coordinated events and activities of project planning and implementation following the inauguration of the Board of Trustees of the PTF. Without doubt, the federal government of Nigeria conceived the PTF as its main strategy to ensure that the gains accruing from the removal of subsidy on petroleum products with effect from October 1994, were prudently applied for the direct benefit of all Nigerians and enhancement of their living standards.

In order to achieve this, the Board of Trustees of the PTF decided to go about discharging its fiduciary responsibility efficiently, honestly and timely. These, then, were the considerations that informed our decision not to throw away the Fund’s money at white elephant projects to the utter disappointment of detractors who may have deliberately refused to understand our objectives. For so doing, we had at various times been accused of simply sitting on billions of naira entrusted to us. It was the moral support of you ordinary Nigerians, your patience, God’s support and the backing of a national leadership that would not be stampeded into incurring unproductive expenditure which helped us to withstand the negative pressure mounted by the unpatriotic elements among us.

We, therefore, took our time to plan and execute our projects using only competent individuals and capable organisations endowed with integrity to help us live up to the expectations and trust of our fellow countrymen and women in the Fund’s various activities all over Nigeria.

The PTF’s Intervention in the Health Sector
Given the overwhelming problems in our public health care delivery system which have been ignored for almost a decade and the limited resources available to us for use in restoring these facilities to minimum acceptable standards, we had to specifically define our intervention policies for all sectors including the health sector.

These policies were:
· To provide affordable, genuine and safe essential drugs, hospital consumables and vaccines to carefully selected public health institutions all over Nigeria to discourage the sale of fake and dangerous drugs to undiscerning members of our society.
· To encourage the local production of essential drugs, hospital consumables and vaccines; and
· To rehabilitate, upgrade and/or install new medical diagnostic equipment and carry out general infrastructure improvement of health care facilities including buildings at targeted public health facilities.

The Fund should probably have done more. But it was never our intention to go after highly ambitious but unattainable goals that would have overstretched the finances and managerial capacity available to us. While the third goal is still in the pipeline, we have made rather moderate achievements on the first, which has enabled us to stimulate the local production of essential drugs and hospital consumables.

In this connection, the PTF has procured and distributed essential drugs worth 1.32 billion naira nationwide. Eighty per cent of these were sourced from Nigerian drug manufacturers in line with our second goal of encouraging local production to improve the investment climate and enhance the employment generating capacity of our national economy. The continuous provision of essential drugs at affordable prices is to be achieved through the PTF-assisted drug revolving fund schemes, the first of which is being launched here today. These drug revolving fund schemes will adopt scientific stock procurement; management and replacement techniques to end the out-of-stock syndrome, which has effectively crippled our public health care delivery system.

They will also rely on the support and vigilance of all Nigerians to complement their inherent uniqueness which is aimed at ensuring their sustenance on a permanent basis. To achieve this objective, we are counting on the efficacy of the following measures:
· To cultivate individual drug revolving fund schemes, DRFs, as business units spread all over Nigeria and stocked with genuine drugs to be sold in an environment that is becoming increasingly competitive.
· To make these DRFs socially responsive by selling their essential drugs at affordable prices to all Nigerians and to initiate a healthy price competition with existing drug retailers.
· To maintain the shelf-life of the drugs by ensuring that they are preserved in medical stores with the required ventilation, lighting and temperature level.
· To use any staff who possesses acceptable levels of professional competence, cognate experience and personal integrity in the day-to-day management of these DRFs.
· Since these DRFs are taking off with little experience to guide their future operations, the PTF has commissioned professionally competent indigenous health and fund management consultants to nurture them into full maturity for self-management.
· The PTF has also concluded arrangements to comprehensively insure all medical stores and selling points dedicated to its DRFs. This is done against all the insurable risks.
· The setting up of intelligence committees at state and zonal levels comprising our zonal consultants with mandate to report to the appropriate authorities/agencies any information on breach of trust committed by any body whose activities are detrimental to the PTF assisted DRFs.

These committees are to be contacted by our fellow countrymen whenever our drugs are seen with unauthorised people or dealt with at illegal places.

The PTF has also engaged the services of the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) as quality control consultants to certify the quality of all ordered drugs. Our zonal health and fund management consultants who receive the drugs upon delivery by suppliers have been instructed to reject drugs without NAFDAC’s certificate. As a result of this measure, the few contractors who did not take our conditions seriously have had their drugs rejected.

In no time the PTF will surely call on the banks that issued advance payment guarantees to such suppliers to fully reimburse the Fund. The PTF has provided the DRFs with free stationery and office consumables for transparent record of all their transactions or sales for effective monitoring and control of their inventory to guard against unrecorded or partially captured payments.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to inform you that the above measures did not come out of guesswork. No sooner was the Board of Trustees of the PTF inaugurated, than we commissioned studies to identify the causes of the failure of drug revolving funds in our public hospitals.

Our findings revealed that it was the failure of these DRFs that caused the transformation of our public facilities into mere consulting outfits. The specific cases were isolated as pilferage and the abuse of exemption of payments to certain class of patients who needed help, but whose predicament became a source of betrayal of trust by dishonest and merciless health workers. Due to these unfortunate developments, drugs disappeared from the hospitals no sooner than they were supplied; and the medical records often dubiously claimed that the drugs had been freely given to helpless, eligible patients. But the truth of the matter was that the same drugs were recycled to drug retailers by few heartless health workers whose complicity effectively killed the DRFs.

We have also striven hard to inscribe the PTF logo on all drugs and capsules, and have provided their containers with our labelling and logo to enable fellow Nigerians to identify them whenever they are seen at places or with people who are not duly authorised to handle them. I call on all Nigerians to be alert and watch out for these unscrupulous members of the public who may be out to sabotage these laudable government efforts in trying to bring health facilities closer to our people.

Without the vigilance and cooperation of the people in fishing out these saboteurs and handing them over to the authorities, all the measures conceived and executed will certainly fail. Here I will like to observe that it is people in our midst who directly or indirectly steal drugs and vitally-needed medical diagnostic equipment from our public hospitals. They sell these to the criminal elements among the business class. These people who deal in stolen goods are known for what they are and what they live on.

Unless the good people themselves refuse to cooperate with or be compromised by, these unpatriotic Nigerians, the war against betrayal of trust in the public sector shall remain both undeclared and unwaged, and all of us will stand shamed by our collective inability to stop crimes that are clearly stoppable.

We must declare this war and, in addition, promptly report those who engage in these shameful, unpatriotic acts. With these remarks, I am pleased to formally launch the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund Drug Revolving Fund Scheme.

Thank you very much.