The Health Anti-corruption Project Advisory Committee (HAPAC) on Wednesday elected its pioneer steering committee members.
The election which was conducted during its first in-person meeting held in Abuja was supervised by Muktar Gandaya (Professor, Public Health).
Those elected are Dr. Idris N. Muhammad (HERFON-CBOT) as Chairman, Tarry Asoka (Independent Consultant in health &Development), Co-Chair, Ms. Victoria Bamas (Editor at ICIR) Secretary, and Iyanoluwa Bolarinwa (Head, Open Government &Institutional Partners) as Assistant Secretary.
In his acceptance speech, HAPAC Chairman, Dr. Idris Muhammad accepted and thanked members who collectively nominated and voted him as the Chairman as God ordained.
He urged members of the committee to support him whenever there is work to be done for the success of the advisory committee; he called for teamwork.
“The challenges we have in the health sector, especially corruption is what many of us opposed, and we must work tirelessly to generate evidence to support our fight against corruption in the health sector,” he declared.
Dr. Muhammad then thanked the organizing partners, the Health Policy Research Group, College of Medicine, the University of Nigeria Enugu Campus led by Professor Obinna Onwujekwe, the School of Oriental and African Studies, Bayero University, Kano, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for supporting the initiative.
HAPAC members comprise persons who will provide advice and champion the use of evidence to address health sector corruption at the national and sub-national levels.
Functions of the HAPAC Steering Committee include providing strategic and policy guidance to the research project and generation of evidence and solutions to health sector corruption across levels of governance, identifying/stimulating interest and expectations of other stakeholders in health and anti-corruption, discussing and making recommendations on policy issues around accountability and anticorruption in health.
Others are to maintain links with organizations, state ministries, and agencies that can foster the progress of the overall project’s objective, create an atmosphere for open dialogue on health sector corruption based on trust, and participate in annual dissemination meetings, workshops, and seminars.
And to offer insightful interpretations of findings identify lessons, study outputs from the project, and undertake a SWOT analysis of the opportunities and constraints of the policy directions.
