Category: Letters

SIR: Online security is a growing concern in an increasingly digital world. Without adequate electronic health record (EHR) security measures in place, millions of healthcare records could be left vulnerable to hackers and cyber-attacks.

According to data from a study published in the HIPAA Journal, over 230,954,151 healthcare records were exposed, lost, or stolen in the past decade as a result of cyber-attacks.

With the threat of EHR security breaches growing every year, healthcare providers must take active steps to secure data and protect patient health records.

Section 25 of the National Health Act creates an obligation on persons in charge of health establishments to keep records of every user of their health service.  Section 26 of the Act provides that “All information concerning a user, including information relating to his or her health status, treatment or stay in a health establishment is confidential.”

However, section 26 (2) makes an exception to the above confidentiality rule by providing that “Subject to section 27 of this Act, no person may disclose any information contemplated in subsection (1) unless- (a) the user consents to that disclosure in writing; (b) a court order or any law requires that disclosure ; (c) in the case of a minor, with the request of a parent or guardian; (d) in the case of a person who is otherwise unable to grant consent upon the request of a guardian or representative; or (e) non-disclosure of the information represents a serious threat to public health.”

A further exception is provided in Section 27 to the effect that “a health worker or any health care provider that has access to the health records of a user may disclose such personal information to any other person, health care provider or health establishment as is necessary for any legitimate purpose within the ordinary course and scope of his or her duties where such access or disclosure is in the interest of the user.”

Today’s society believes that electronic medical records offer advantages for storing and accessing patient health information, which may improve the management of patient care. However, the features that make electronic records desirable—accessibility, transferability, and portability of patient health information—also present privacy risks.

In keeping with regulatory requirements and policies from the medical regulatory authorities, doctors are required to use appropriate measures to safeguard the privacy of patients’ personal health information.

To reduce the risk of privacy breaches, some of these measures include installation of encryption software on devices. Encryption transforms electronic information into a form that is unintelligible, such as a muddled stream of seemingly random symbols. Only those who are authorized to decrypt such information are able to do so. Privacy commissioners across Canada generally promote the use of encryption software, while some jurisdictions, including British Columbia, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Alberta specifically mandate that personal health information be encrypted when stored electronically on mobile devices.

In addition to this, computers and devices should be appropriately protected using physical and electronic measures. Examples include safeguards such as robust passwords, firewalls, virus protection, and physical security.

While responsibility for privacy of medical records maintained by hospitals rests primarily with the institution as the custodian, staff physician should be familiar with any obligations under the institution’s policies, access or data sharing agreements, as an agent or affiliate of the institution under privacy legislation.

When computers or other electronic devices are being upgraded or when the applicable retention period for a medical record has been reached, it is important to appropriately transfer or dispose of the information stored on the device.

The sensitive nature of the information contained within electronic health records has prompted the need for advanced security techniques that are able to put these worries at ease. It is imperative for security techniques to cover the vast threats that are present across the three pillars of healthcare.

•Victor Okeke,

Centre for Social Justice, Abuja.

SIR: Every day, in the different war zones that litter the country, non-state actors let loose a barrage of fire in the war they wage against Nigeria. When the noise dies down, the bodies pile up.

The bodies of young men and women brutally cut down in their prime are testament to a country at war, one forced to make one too many sacrifices.

The war zones which now scar Nigeria’s landscape are especially concentrated in some Nigerian states. These states which are predominantly northern states have seen no little blood.

From Borno to Yobe to Kaduna to Kebbi to Katsina to Zamfara and Niger states among others, many of those who serve in the different security agencies have had to lay down their lives.

Whenever another of what have become carefully orchestrated attacks are carried out, security agencies count their losses while the enemies of the country count trophies.

 The perilous nature of defending Nigeria from bloodthirsty insurgents is furiously underlined by the hazards that face those courageous enough to bear arms in defence of the country.

While many Nigerians would rather seek employment elsewhere assuming those opportunities were not so scarce, many in search of secure jobs choose to serve.

The fact that the so-called secure jobs rank as the most insecure is telling in itself. For those who defend Nigeria, death is only a whisker away as is grievous bodily harm.

 In volatile Kaduna State, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps is one of such security agencies tasked with keeping terrorists away from tormented communities.

In the face of grave danger, the corps has always strived to ensure that its men are always stationed to defend beleaguered communities. However, the corps received a rude awakening recently.

On Monday January 9, bandits attacked and killed seven personnel of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps at a local mining site in Kaduna State.

The attacks which also felled about six vigilantes in the area were said to have occurred around 3.00pm and were carried out by two groups of  attackers.

The attacks continued a trend of killing security personnel in Kaduna State which has quickly proven to be one of the most dangerous states in Nigeria for security personnel.

Kaduna State has also remained one of Nigeria’s most unsafe states. This is in spite of the heavy presence of Nigeria’s premier defence institutions in the state.

In 2022, terrorists attacked the Nigeria Defence Academy in Kaduna State, killed some soldiers and abducted others.

The authorities must do more to secure lives and property in Kaduna State especially the lives of those who keep others safe. The constant losses seriously weaken efforts to contain the menace.

The federal and the Kaduna State governments have each had about eight years in office. In these eight years, the security situation in Kaduna State has  grown worse by the day.

It is an indictment of the government that every measure taken to keep the state safe has failed to yield the desired results. In the face of the overwhelming failures, what has been changed?

It is not really about sending more security personnel to  comb the thick forests of Kaduna State until no single terrorist is left there to plan more attacks.

Rather, it is about ensuring that the best strategy whose efficacy has been proven by experience is employed to neutralise the terrorists and ensure that they are systematically decimated.

It is rather about ensuring that those who fight are armed with the best arms and are properly trained to combat those who pose existential threats to Nigeria.

Again, around the country, those who combat these insurgents always fall into deadly ambushes. On its own, this is enough indictment for Nigeria’s intelligence gathering.

This unfortunate and catastrophically costly war against terror has lingered because those who attack Nigeria always seem to be one step ahead of those who defend her.

Unless this gap is bridged, Nigeria will continue to fight without much to show for it. The last eight years have gone into this fight with embarrassingly little to show for it.

It is also in the interest of winning the war against terror that Nigeria moves against those who sponsor those who are determined to hasten the demise of the country.

Until Nigeria moves to decisively win the war against terror, the country will continue to lose  valiant men and women to the dogs lapping up Nigeria’s blood.

•Kene Obiezu,

Twitter:@kenobiezu

SIR: Governor of Central Bank, Goodwin Emefiele, has been in the news lately. Nigerians were startled with the news that the Department of State Security (DSS), had gone to federal high court, Abuja to obtain warrant to arrest the governor based on allegations bordering on terrorism financing and economic crimes – which the court, thankfully, flatly refused.

Emefiele, who spent his annual leave abroad, returned to the country on Monday amidst fresh rumours of his arrest. The DSS has denied any attempt to arrest him.

While the allegations against the governor are grave, Nigerians have expressed misgivings about its timing. It is coming few months after CBN initiated policies supposedly aimed at saving the country’s economy from collapse. The move to re-design the naira had met with stiff opposition from some powerful forces, including National Assembly members. Emefiele who apparently enjoys the support of the president, has, thus far, weathered the tumultuous storm. 

Last year, the CBN governor had raised the alarm that trillions of naira were outside the banking sector. This was linked to wild speculations about some corrupt government officials and their cohorts stockpiling stolen monies for sundry purposes. The decision of the CBN to get the funds back into banking vaults is viewed in some quarters with considerable alarm.

No one is saying that the CBN governor is a saint or should not be made to answer to the charges against him. In fact, he should come out and clear his name of whatever credible allegations are being levelled against him.

What Nigerians would deplore is corrupt elements seeking their pound of flesh. After all, it is understandable that the CBN governor, through the cashless policy, will step on the toes of many money bag politicians. With few weeks to the general elections and INEC’s commitment to conduct free and fair elections, the cashless policy being currently implemented by the CBN will make it hard for politicians to engage in votes buying.

Moreover, those who corruptly enriched themselves and stashed away billions of naira in illicit funds and have reasons to fear that the new CBN policy will expose their dirtiness will simply not fold their hands. With the EFCC officials keeping vigil to arrest suspected corrupt depositors, the dark forces will fight back even dangerously.

Unless the CBN governor has skeletons in his cupboard, President Muhammadu Buhari should support the ongoing monetary policy reform. Who knows whether the administration’s war against corruption which has failed the integrity test can still be redeemed?

The monster of corruption bedevilling the country has defied the jaw of police, the court, ICPC and EFCC. It may well be that the CBN has found the magic wand. Let Nigerians support it.

•Ibrahim Mustapha,

Pambegua, Kaduna State.

By Victor Okeke

SIR: When the history of the COVID-19 pandemic is written, the failure of many states to live up to their human rights obligations would be a central narrative. This is largely because years of underinvestment in pandemic preparedness and health systems have reduced access to and disrupted essential health services and caused preventable COVID-19 deaths.

Non-discrimination is core to human rights law, and requires governments to affirmatively safeguard the rights of disadvantaged, marginalised, and vulnerable people. Yet discrimination has been a hallmark of the pandemic, with hugely disparate rates of infection, hospitalisation, and mortality. The inequitable impacts implicate rights to health, food, education, and an adequate standard of living, among others, most harming poorer and more marginalised populations, but also affecting large swathes of populations in countries with weak social protection systems.

The COVID-19 Global Vaccine Access Facility (COVAX), was an innovative, unprecedented global initiative that has fallen short. It aimed to cover the most clinically vulnerable 20% of each participating country in 2021, including delivering 1.3 billion doses to 92 primarily low-income and lower-middle-income countries. By mid-January, 2022, COVAX had delivered only one billion doses, 85% to those 92 countries.

There are two features that most impeded COVAX’s capacity to ensure the right to health for all. First, countries could participate in COVAX and simultaneously sign exclusive vaccine purchase agreements, as many high-income countries did, undermining the notion of health as a global common good. Consequently, COVAX could not access adequate vaccine doses and had reduced flexibility on which vaccines it could acquire. Second, COVAX funding is voluntary and thus inadequate.

Extensive human rights violations during the COVID-19 pandemic, with roots preceding the pandemic, demand equally extensive structural reforms. New rights-based national and global governance for the right to health should respond to the daily health emergency of health inequities that COVID-19 revealed and reinforced. Future governance, and the mechanisms that underpin it, must ensure equitable and effective responses to health emergencies by embedding the right to health, accountability, participation, and equity in global and national policies and international responses.

Dedicating the obligatory maximum of available resources to health and other rights and ending discrimination should accelerate equitable, high-quality universal health coverage, impro­ving surveillance, disease detection, and care. Marginalised populations’ participation in health planning­ will help ensure that when an epidemic strikes, no one is left behind. Rights-based international standards and mechanisms could lead to far more equitable distribution of medical technologies.

• Victor Okeke, Centre for Social Justice, Abuja.

By Daniel Ighakpe

SIR: The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) identified the main causes of hunger to include persistent conflicts, climate change, inflation, and rising food prices. In addition, currency depreciation has also been listed as a factor to the problem. The FAO noted that access to food has been affected by unrelenting terrorism in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states, as well as banditry and abductions in Katsina, Sokoto, Kaduna, Benue and Niger states.

It also recalled that the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) reported that last year’s flooding claimed more than 676,000 hectares of farmland, diminishing harvests and increasing food insecurity across Nigeria, thereby contributing to the risk of hunger. The FAO, a UN agency, further stated that more extreme weather patterns affecting starvation are anticipated in the future.

It has ben reported that approximately six of the 17 million food insecure Nigerians today are children under the age of five, living in Borno, Adamawa, Yobe, Sokoto, Katsina and Zamfara states. There is a serious risk of mortality among children, attributed to acute malnutrition. In Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states alone, the number of children suffering from acute malnutrition is expected to increase from 1.74 million in 2022 to two million in 2023.

The FAO Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria, Matthias Schmale, pointed out that UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), working with government and partners such as MSF and ALIMA, is investing in scaling up preventive nutrition interventions, while ensuring that vulnerable children have access to life-saving nutrition services.

What can help to reduce this risk of severe hunger? There is an urgent need for financial support. Also, apart from funding, there is also a need to revive and transform our agricultural and food systems to, among other things, deliver improved nutrition. All stakeholders need to redouble their efforts in order to boost food sufficiency and improve nutrition. It is not just about feeding people, it is also about providing the necessary nutrients for a healthy life.

 Also, Nigeria has been grappling with security challenges, especially in the Northeast and Middle Belt areas of the country. This has also affected /farming in such areas, as many people are being hindered from planting or harvesting crops. If all these security challenges are properly addressed, it can help to reduce the high risk hunger of famine.

 Climate change is another factor that contributes to famine and hunger. Floods and drought brought on by climate change make it harder to produce food. Erratic rainfall patterns can also severely disrupt local food production. As a result, the price of food increases and access becomes more and more limited, putting many at higher risk of hunger.

The primary cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, which emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – primarily carbon dioxide. Unless climate change is mitigated by substantial reductions of greenhouse gases, it will greatly increase hunger and famine, especially in the poorest parts of the world.

 It is also important to note that preventing further spread of acute food shortages must start with producing food where it is needed the most. Prevention of hunger and famine must begin in the rural areas where people coping with high levels of food insecurity live. The focus in such areas should be on growing food where it is needed the most, and keeping animals alive. This can help to stabilize and increase local food production, in order to prevent a breakout of famine.

In more isolated rural areas especially, the critical role of local and backyard food production in keeping families alive cannot be overemphasized. The importance of sustaining livestock can also not be overstated.

• Daniel Ighakpe – FESTAC Town, Lagos.

By Mohammed Isa Bilal

SIR: Whereas most parents from southern parts of Nigeria are ever ready to take the responsibility of their God-giving children and probably starve themselves, just to ensure they give their children the best of education, in the north, many allow their children to roam the streets of major cities begging under the pretext of seeking Qur’anic education, which of course is un-Islamic. Worst still, most state governments in northern Nigeria pay only lip service to issues affecting basic education of the millions of out-of-school children in the region.

This is in spite of the fact that states and local governments are saddled with the responsibility of providing basic education to citizens. The Nigeria Bureau for Statistics, ministerial committee on out-of-school age children and other notable international indicators have all reported that there are over 13 million “Almajiri (itinerant Qur’anic school pupils) in the country. More worrisome is the fact that 95 percent of this are of Northern Nigerian origin, while most northern governments are looking indifferent to this growing monster.

This class of Nigerian children poses serious challenges to the attainment of Education for All (EFA) and poses serious challenges to the Sustainable millennium Development Goals (SDGs) as well as that of other eminent international conventions and protocols. It is pertinent to re-admonish especially northern state governments on the need to be decisive and summon the political-will of taking drastic action in that regard.

Kano State being the most populated state in the region has proven to be an exception for the northern elite’s conspiracy against the general education of school age children. The State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) under the leadership of Dr. Danlami Ayu has not relented in its efforts towards ensuring the Almajiri and other out-of-school children in the state are encouraged to access the free and compulsory Basic Education Policy of the state government.

Under the watch of Ayu, several interventions have been introduced towards creating an enabling environment that would propel massive enrolment of the Almajiri and other out of school children into the free and compulsory basic education policy proclaimed in the state.

These include the establishment of integrated Almajiri model schools committees across the 44 LGAs of the state, involving critical stakeholders, such as religious leaders, Alarammas or Mallams of various local Qur’anic schools as well as desk officers from the board.

They are to facilitate the sensitization, advocacy and development of the state framework for the development and integration of Almajiri education; production and distribution of curricula-textbooks and teachers guide for the Almajiri integration and education programme across all existing Almajiri model schools set up across the state.

However, despite the tremendous strides recorded by the Kano SUBEB, in the effort to ensure the success of the state free education policy, especially at the basic level, a number of challenges have been identified in the process. Prominent among these is the socio-cultural belief on the part of segment of parents in some rural communities, who still stick to apathy towards Western Education, preferring the itinerant way of acquiring Islamic knowledge which of course is untenable in this present century.

To defeat this challenge, Kano SUBEB has taken such steps such as free feeding as a retention strategy, motivation incentives to the local Almajiri Mallams as well as the provision of adequate quality infrastructural facilities in order to entice and ensure sustainability of the Almajiri integrated model schools in the state. It is interesting to note that, as at today, the Kano SUBEB has co-opted a good number of Alarammas (local scholars) traditional leaders, community leaders and Almajiri Mallams substantially into the Almajiri Integrated school programme.

Worthy of mention is that the state governor, Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje penultimate week approved the release of N10 billion for the construction of additional two classroom blocks in selected primary schools in virtually all the 44 LGAs of the state, to accommodate the astronomical rate of school enrolment at the primary level.

 I hope other states in the region would borrow a leaf from the commendable and unrelenting effort of the Kano State Primary Education Board, at least for the sake of safeguarding the future of northern children.

• Mohammed Isa Bilal, Jos, Plateau State.

SIR: The road to the Presidential Villa is long, expensive, and exhausting. Becoming a candidate is only the beginning of the election process. Successful candidates must both persuade voters that they deserve their individual votes and garner the critical votes of electors within the system and persuading voters is the essence of a political campaign. Advertising, theme songs, stump speeches, and even negative campaigning have been around since our country began, and each advance in technology since then has offered new opportunities for candidates to persuade voters. This is well entrenched in our body politic.

More specifically, as Africa’s most populous country, largest economy and most notable democracy, Nigeria is a bellwether for the continent. A weakening economy, rising insecurity and violent conflicts threaten progress made in its democratic development. Amidst deepening distrust amongst each other by reasons of ethnicity and religion, Nigeria has significant work to do in improving national, state and local security and governance ahead of national and state elections in the February/March general elections.

The elections will be conducted under a new electoral framework, the Electoral Act 2022, a law that provides a more robust legal framework for the conduct of the polls. The law gives the legislative backing for more transparent voting, collation and announcement of results. It enables the use of card readers and other technological devices in elections and political party primaries, to provide a time line for the submission of list of candidates, criteria for substitution of candidates, limit of campaign expenses, and address the omission of names of candidates or logo of political parties.

Against this background, as a nation destined for greatness, let’s change the narratives through credible elections and good conducts. Therefore, any presidential candidate who plays the religion or ethics card should not only be rejected at the polls, but sanctioned. Such candidate may have nothing and absolutely nothing to offer. Invariably the four frontline presidential candidates have past records for which they should be appraised. Atiku Abubakar was vice president for eight years, Rabiu Kwankwaso was Kano State governor eight years; Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was governor of Lagos State for eight years and Peter Obi was governor in Anambra for eight years.

The candidates’ records, achievements and legacies in previous position held should be the yardstick for their appraisal not religion or ethnic sentiments. We sure need to change the narrative. It should be what I have done before in a similar position; what I can do and what I will do. This is certainly not the time for experiments. Any one among the major candidates fanning the embers of religion and ethnicity simply means he has nothing to offer. Let’s call a spade a spade. Let’s deemphasize ethnicity and religion in our political discussions. 

The British we all know play a major role in the spread of Christianity in Nigeria. Today the incumbent Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Rishi Sunak is not a Christian but a dedicated Hindu. Therefore, let’s throw away religion and ethnic sentiments and elect leaders who have the capacity to take Nigeria to the next level. This is our last chance. Today, Africa is laced with some of the most obstinate conflicts, most of them constructed from differences in religious and ethnic identities.

•Richard Odusanya,

odusanyagold@gmail.com