There is disquiet in the offices of the West African Health Organisation(WAHO) following a petition to the President of Economic Community of West African States(ECOWAS) President, Jean Claude Kassi Brou, by an international non-governmental organization (NGO), African Peoples Centre for Transparency & Good Governance .

The NGO in a petition to the President of ECOWAS Commission, datedJanuary 21, 2022 called on him to set up a panel to investigate allegations ofMaladministration and Abuse of Office levelled against the Director-General, West African Health Organisation (WAHO), Prof Stanley Okolo.

The petitioners, said they were compelled to send their complaint to the ECOWAS President as a result of “growing concerns” about the way and manner in which Professor Okolo, a Nigerian, “has been running the affairs of this great Institution since 2018 when he assumed office.

The letter, titled “PETITION AGAINST PROF STANLEY OKOLO, DIRECTOR-GENERAL, WEST AFRICAN HEALTH ORGANISATION (WAHO) FOR MALADMINISTRATION AND ABUSE OF OFFICE,” was also copied to the Auditor-General of ECOWAS, Alfred Braimah.

A copy of the petition, which was received and acknowledged by the ECOWAS Commission in Abuja on  February 3, 2022, was obtained by a correspondent of a Bourkina Faso-basd international online medium, Net Afrique.

 The 5-page petition, jointly signed by six different nationals across West Africa, reads in part:

“Our concerns are predicated on the following acts of nepotism, misconduct and favoritism, arbitrary recruitment, private gain, and impediment to efficiency by the Director-General, which constitute clear Maladministration and abuse of office:

1. ‘Anglophonization’ and ‘Nigerianization’ of WAHO through arbitrary recruitment:

Since Prof Okolo took over the management of WAHO as Director-General, he has hijacked the recruitment process, which has been favoring anglophone countries – mainly Nigerians, without recourse to established due process nor on the basis of merit. By hijacking the recruitment and promotion processes, the DG himself decides on the scoring so as to favor his protégés.

The staff and in fact all concerned citizens of ECOWAS believe that there should be fairness and justice in the recruitment to fill the various vacancies and whoever is recruited after following the due process will be accepted; this, we believe, cannot happen with the current Director-General.

2. Playing of nepotism card

The Director-General brought his sister-in-law as his Executive Assistant, a situation nobody has qualm with by virtue of the fact that he is free to appoint whoever he wants to this position. His term of office is about to expire and he wants to impose his sister-in-law (who is a supposedly trained nurse) as the new Professional Officer in charge of Nursing; the incumbent officer is retiring by the end of January 2022. 

The Director-General also plans to impose another relative for the position of Communications Officer. This relative, who is highly inexperienced, is the fiancée of his brother-in-law (the wife’s brother), according to sources. He imposed this lady from day one without proper recruitment process. The lady was later asked to leave WAHO at the request of the ECOWAS Commission. Somehow, he found a way to bring the lady back for six months and her job was to manage the Twitter account with a monthly pay of US$6000. The lady left after the six months but again the Director-General found a way to bring her back with the excuse that she was coming to help the team for a period of three months and this was during the peak of COVID-19. The lady stayed in Abuja and supposedly worked online and was paid between US$6000 – US$8000 a month. This is the lady he wants to bring in as a permanent Communications Officer. This is the caliber of person the Director-General wants to impose on WAHO.

The Director-General frustrated all those who he felt were occupying positions he ‘earmarked’ for his protégés, and they resigned. 

There’s another project called SRH/FP (Sexual Reproduction Health/Family Planning), which is being funded by DEMSAN. When the contract of the project’s Coordinator – Niger national, expired in 2020, the DG attempted to replace her with his own candidate from his Enugu state (Nigeria) by refusing to renew her contract.  It took the intervention of the Government of Niger Republic before the DG reluctantly agreed to renew the contract.

3. Misuse of public funds:

We are also worried about the Director-General’s behavior concerning the use of public funds.

For instance, the DG brought in another lady from his Enugu town (Nigeria) to be organizing all activities of WAHO.  The lady is being paid huge sums of money by WAHO, whereas, before the coming of Prof Okolo, Programme Officers/Coordinators were handling the organization of such activities themselves at less cost. For instance, in November 2021, the lady managed the Annual Health Ministers (AHM) meeting held at the Sheraton Hotel in Abuja, Nigeria, where she was paid over $40,000 as her fee for organizing the event.

Also, when WAHO organized an activity in Lomé, Togo, the DG, Prof Okolo, brought his wife as a resource person. The cost involved in bringing her over to Lomé (air tickets, accommodation, stipends and honorarium) were borne by WAHO. The question is: Is it allowed? Is this not a conflict of interest and abuse of office? 

We believe the Director-General needs to be checked and adequate measures taken to prevent such occurrences in the future and abuse of power.

4. Poor performance of health programme activities:

Since the assumption of office of Prof Stanley Okolo as Director-General in 2018, the performance of health programme activities has dropped drastically.  Key Programme Managers of SWEDD, SMNTD, REDISSE, have all resigned and left because of frustration. One factor was that he arbitrarily reduced their contract from one year to six months.

 5. Staff Training Programme:

Another programme that has failed since 2018 when Prof Okolo assumed office, is staff training.  This was a yearly programme, but when Prof Okolo came in, he cut down the budget to a size that can no longer accommodate staff training. Even those that could be accommodated, when they applied, were rejected by him.  He refused to approve their training for reasons best known to him.

6. Improper handling of COVID-19 Funds:

The Director-General, Prof Okolo, is believed to have stultified efficiency in the management of COVID-19 fund by using a company called VANGALION for the purchase of COVID-19 personal protective equipment (PPEs) without recourse to due process in procurement. He is also said to have used the proceeds from the deal to purchase a personal house in one of the African countries.

7. Engagement of the Director-General’s Sister-in-Law as Executive Assistant:

The lady is a trained Nurse without cognate experience in public health. Prof Okolo wants to impose her as professional officer (PO) Nursing and Midwifery – a position that is going to become vacant soon.  The Director-General is bent on imposing her by trying to manipulate the recruitment process to favour her.  Already, he has cooked up a job description that would make the lady the only selectable candidate – at the expense of other more suitably qualified candidates in West Africa.

 8. Illegal signing of contracts without following due process:

The DG had in April 2020, single-handedly signed UNDP project contract valued at $6.6million, which was later queried by the Finance Controller. This, in our view, constitutes a gross abuse of office with a potential for abuse of office and related corrupt act and, as such, the Director-General must be stopped.”

In their prayers, the petitioners urged the President of ECOWAS Commission to order for:

a)   Immediate freezing of all recruitments until after the new administration gets on board and anybody including the current Director-General’s protégés should be allowed to apply and treated fairly and equally;

b)   A probe into the management of COVID-19 funds under Prof Okolo as Director-General of WAHO;

c)    A policy directive requiring the incumbent and successive DGs to always ensure that WAHO, being a regional institution with high level of integrity, is not reduced to a Nigeria outfit where nepotism and favoritism are used in the administration and management of the institution and its resources;

d)   Investigation into other matters incidental to the proper, efficient and transparent management of the affairs of WAHO from 2018 to date.

They expressed the hope that their petition would receive prompt attention and necessary action(s) “in order to save the integrity and future of WAHO and ECOWAS as a whole.”

“In this regard, we invite the President to take note of Article 3 of the Revised ECOWAS Treaty, which provides that the overall objective of WAHO is to act together with the other Community Institutions and nationals so as to contribute to the attainment of the ideals of the creation of an Economic Union of West Africa,” they concluded.

The signatories to the petition are: Souleymane Adama, Fatoumata Mamadou, Azagba Obaseki, Kokou Oji, Anildo Anselmo and Tunde Olanrewaju.

The petition is coming on the heels of recent revelations that WAHO’s major development partners, including the World Bank and USAID, have decided to pull out in protest the against Professor Okolo’s style of leadership.

As gathered, the development partners have indeed concluded plans to form a parallel body known as Partnership for Health Security in West Africa (PHSWA), through which they intend to challenge the funding support that was hitherto given to WAHO.

The grouse of the development partners, according to sources, is that since assumption of office as Director-General of WAHO, Professor Okolo has totally ignored them, operating, instead, in isolation.

The impact of WAHO is normally measured in terms of the number and quality of programme activities executed in any given year.

A former senior staff from one of the English-speaking member states, who reacted to the petition as reported by Net Afrique, an online news platform based in Burkina Faso,said he was not surprised at the allegations made against Prof Okolo by the petitioners, pointing out that “the man has a reputation for arrogant impunity.”

 “Take for instance, WAHO has a permanent house for all the DGs but when he (Prof Okolo) reported to duty, he requested that the house should be renovated to his taste before he will move in. This was done at a high cost, but he later rejected the place and went to hire another house at the expense of the institution.

“I am aware that the Office of the Auditor-General of ECOWAS did carry out an investigation of this among other normal accounting audits at WAHO and indicted the Professor on the house issues.  Yet, nothing has been done about it, and may be because the rumor that the President of ECOWAS  has soft spot for the WAHO DG,” he recalled.

It was not clear at the time of this report whether or not the ECOWAS Commission President had acted on the petition, especially given the seeming weight of the allegations contained therein.

A source close to the Commission however feared at the weekend that Professor Okolo was in the good books of the President of ECOWAS and the Nigerian President as well as some heads of other ECOWAS institutions, who might try to save the neck of the embattled WAHO Directir-General.

According to the source, this feared might not be unconnected with the fact that “very unlike the tradition in ECOWAS, that petition should have been acted upon under two weeks of its receipt by the Commission.”

The petitioners had requested a full investigation into the purported financial impropriety allegedly committed by Prof Okolo and to stop him from recruiting personnel at WAHO, “the DG still goes ahead to put machinery in place to carry out the recruitments,” another source knowledgeable about the ECOWAS health institution told a Correspondent of Afrique Net. (First Reported by Net Afrique)