Rianat Oyeleye
Title: CORRUPTION IN THE NIGERIAN PUBLIC HEALTHCARE SYSTEM; CASE STUDY OF AGEGE LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Supervisor: Leno Saarniit, MSc
Opponent: Prof. Dr. Jide Ifedayo Ibietan
Defense: 19 January 2022
Abstract: The case of corruption in Nigeria remains a wicked problem. Many forms of corrupt practices have been identified in the public health care sector. In the public health care industry, a variety of fraudulent behaviors have been uncovered. As a result, the focus of this study is on the effect of these corrupt practices on the delivery of health-care services to patients, in Agege Local Government area of Lagos State. A combination of different instruments was adopted to generate and analyze the results ranging from the administering of questionnaires to 3 health care facilities in this local government, the use of bar and pie charts and chi-square tests to analyze the responses obtained. The result showed that patients were often referred to private health facilities by health practitioners, also, there is a high rate of informal payments. Absenteeism is also very prominent among health workers thereby causing long waiting times as many health workers do not report to their duty post. The health practitioners also perceived the sector as being corrupt as they cite low and late payment of salaries in their answers. The recommendation is to ensure a high level of transparency in this sector so that informal payments for free services are eradicated, the health ministry should roll out anti-corruption measures which aim to identify the causes of these corrupt practices. Also, the salaries of health practitioners should be increased and paid timely as this is one of the causes why the health practitioners engage in these corrupt practices..
Keywords: Corruption, health practitioners, Healthcare sector, Patients, anti-corruption
