General News
Technology, Foundation for 21st century Effective Healthcare-Oracle
Adebayo Sanni, Oracle country director has highlighted that the global healthcare industry is under constant pressure to provide more and better access to care, while managing ever-increasing demands and costs.
Sanni said that even advanced countries with long histories of universal healthcare are reeling under the pressure of increasing populations, especially amongst the aged who expect quality healthcare irrespective of the financial, technical and human resource pressures on national health systems.
According to him, countries like Nigeria that are looking at ways to implement a National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) that will ultimately provide cover for the whole population, are also faced with a difficult task.
How can a country with only about 3% of its population benefiting from health cover currently, develop and grow its NHIS effectively to include more citizens.
The Oracle boss described the task as enormous task.
Sanni said, “Even the proposed first step of extending health cover to 30% of the population by 2015 requires careful planning to ensure the roll-out is successful and that it creates a solid foundation for future expansion.
“One of the enablers of modern healthcare the world over is technology. Over the past few years we have seen an increase in investments into electronic healthcare technologies, which hold the promise of improving care and ensuring better outcomes, irrespective of the setting. We are moving from an episodic-based system to a longitudinal system that delivers continuous value.
“The optimal use of technology in healthcare will allow caregivers to deal with any person, at any time, more effectively than ever before.
“Healthcare in the 21st century is far more than simply treating a specific condition or symptom; effective healthcare today means treating the whole person across a multitude of care settings and conditions. Achieving this ideal is only possible with a reliable, integrated healthcare system.
“The question for any operation looking at healthcare provision, whether in a single home or across a vast country, is whether the process starts with the appropriate technology matching the right technology road-map.
“When planned and implemented correctly, this will empower healthcare organizations to meet their immediate challenges, while providing a solid foundation to build on for the future.
The Right Technological Approach
Sanni added that the process through which organizations approach building their technical healthcare solution varies.
Many have taken a tactical approach, purchasing point solutions to tackle each challenge or implementing a service-intensive technology designed to deal with a particular problem, and then building on it as time and budgets permit.
Unfortunately, this approach is likely to cause more problems than it solves.
“Tackling each challenge with a separate product can lead to integration problems in the future that lead to a more complex environment that is much more difficult to support. Far from containing costs, this scenario can potentially drive up the cost of delivering healthcare as well as create new risks and potential safety issues,” explained Sanni. “Many point solutions are just not built for addressing the challenges of integration, data consolidation and operational efficiency. Moreover, because they are designed to solve a single problem, most cannot assist with integration challenges, they only make it more difficult.”
To take advantage of the incredible innovation in progress in healthcare information technology today, Sanni believes it is critical for organizations to look to a strategic partner that can provide vertical solutions as well as deep integration with underlying technology and mission-critical applications. Ultimately, this delivers a platform that delivers today’s requirements and will meet future growth demands, irrespective of the direction healthcare takes.
Oracle is the global leader in connected healthcare solutions. It delivers strategic capabilities, such as the secure exchange of health records that complies with regulations. More importantly, it also delivers meaningful benefits to the end user – the patient.
“Our connected health solutions provide accurate healthcare of information when and where it’s needed and we assist in improving customer engagement, continuity of care as well as long-term care capabilities from different service providers. Additionally, Oracle does this while providing the ability to seamlessly integrate new and exciting technologies such as tele-health and remote medical devices into the solution,” noted Sanni.
Technology is obviously not the only issue that needs to be addressed when contemplating a national health system such as the NHIS.
However, the right technology provides the starting point for all that is possible in healthcare.
In the past, there has always been a disconnect between the patient, payer and provider.
Today, technology is giving us better ways to enable collaboration and ensure service providers are able to deliver quality care on a long-term basis.
Dangote Petroleum Refinery is reportedly nearing completion of a $2.5 billion private placement that values the company at about $40 billion ahead of its planned public listing.
Private placement is the direct sale of company shares or bonds to pre-selected investors instead of the general public and it is used to raise money quickly while avoiding strict public reporting rules.
People familiar with the transaction said investors acquired as much as 6 per cent of the refinery, according to a BusinessDay report.
The reported terms would value the business at approximately $40 billion.
Neither Dangote Group nor the refinery has publicly announced the final amount raised, the identities of most subscribers or the precise percentage sold.
The figures should therefore be treated as transaction details supplied by unnamed sources rather than confirmed company disclosures.
The reported $2.5 billion total is nevertheless significant as it indicates strong demand for exposure to a privately controlled refinery that has rapidly become central to Nigeria’s fuel supply and an increasingly important exporter of petroleum products.
The placement was said to have attracted more demand than the available shares, allowing the company to secure substantially more than the amount initially associated with the fundraising exercise.
Femi Otedola, chairman, First HoldCo, is the only major participant publicly identified in the report.
He reportedly committed $100 million to the transaction and sold his investment in Geregu Power Plc to finance the acquisition.
Nigeria’s pension industry was also reportedly cleared to participate.
Access to more than $17 billion in retirement assets would broaden the refinery’s potential investor base beyond wealthy individuals and conventional institutional buyers.
Participation by Pension Fund Administrators would, however, require careful attention to valuation, liquidity and portfolio-concentration limits.
Retirement funds must balance the attraction of a large Nigerian industrial asset against their responsibility to protect contributors’ savings.
The implied $40 billion valuation represents investor expectations about the refinery’s future earnings rather than only the physical cost of constructing the facility.
Its ability to process 650,000 barrels of crude daily gives it a central role in supplying Nigeria and other markets, but its commercial performance remains connected to crude availability, product prices, exchange rates and regulation.
The refinery has struggled to obtain all the Nigerian crude it requires under the government’s naira-for-crude arrangement.
It has consequently purchased some feedstock internationally and recently moved local petroleum-product pricing into dollars to align sales revenue more closely with its foreign-currency expenses.
Those constraints will be important during any public offering.
Prospective shareholders will want greater clarity on crude-supply contracts, debt, operating margins, export revenue and the company’s relationship with Nigerian regulators.
It is also unclear whether the private placement involved newly issued shares, a sale by existing owners or a combination of both.
That distinction determines whether the reported $2.5 billion becomes fresh capital for the refinery or proceeds received by selling shareholders.
The transaction could provide a useful price reference for the planned initial public offering.
Federal government will next month launch Nigeria’s first national organized crime strategy to strengthen the country’s response to terrorism, cybercrime, human and drug trafficking, kidnapping, illicit financial flows, and other forms of organized crime.
Major General Adamu Laka, national coordinator of the National Counter Terrorism Centre under the Office of the National Security Adviser, disclosed this in Abuja during the validation of the strategy document.
He said the strategy provides a coordinated national framework for tackling organized crime through improved intelligence sharing, stronger collaboration among security agencies, and closer cooperation with the criminal justice system, civil society organizations, and international partners.
Major General Laka explained that the document was developed through a partnership involving the Federal Government, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the United States Government, and other stakeholders.
Speaking at the event, Cheikh Toure, UNODC representative, said the strategy would strengthen Nigeria’s capacity to combat transnational crimes, including drug trafficking, cybercrime, human trafficking, kidnapping, and illicit financial flows.
Also speaking, Douglas Grane, acting director of the United States Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, reaffirmed the U.S. government’s support for Nigeria’s efforts to tackle organized crime through stronger inter-agency and international cooperation.
Representatives of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit, and the National Cyber Security Centre also endorsed the initiative, describing it as a major step towards improving Nigeria’s fight against organized crime.
FATE Foundation, with funding from the Citi Foundation, has launched the Youth Entrepreneurship Incubation Programme to equip young people in Nigeria with financial literacy and entrepreneurship skills.
Delivered through free, safe, and accessible platforms, the programme supports the incubation and scaling of youth-led enterprises, enabling income generation and job creation.
In October 2025, FATE Foundation was selected as a recipient of Citi Foundation’s 2025 Global Innovation Challenge to Accelerate Youth Employability. Joining the cohort of 50 organisations globally, the Foundation will receive $500,000 over two years to advance its youth employability initiative.
“We are excited to be selected for Citi Foundation’s 2025 Global Innovation Challenge,” said Ayomide Akindolie-Igwe, Executive Director of FATE Foundation.
“This support enables us to equip young entrepreneurs in Nigeria with the financial literacy and skills needed to build and scale sustainable businesses.”
The programme addresses youth employability by tackling Africa’s growing jobs crisis. By 2030, the African continent will be home to 40% of the world’s youth, and with one in three under 35 already unemployed, this initiative will support Nigerian youth with a two-phase approach. It begins with financial literacy training before progressing to entrepreneurship development, incubation support, and access to tools needed to build viable, job-creating businesses.
“Through this innovative initiative, FATE Foundation is supporting low-income Nigerian youth to develop essential financial and entrepreneurial skills using accessible platforms.
“This support is not just helping individuals to succeed; it is building a solid foundation for sustainable enterprises that will drive job creation and contribute significantly to our nation’s economic vitality. This initiative is empowering and investing in the future of Nigeria, one youth at a time,” said Nneka Enwereji, MD/CEO Citibank Nigeria Limited.
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