On Wednesday, nine days after the Senate had confirmed the 45 ministers after a week-long vetting process, President Bola Tinubu unveiled their portfolios.
The President will administer the oath of office to the ministers on Monday at the State House Conference in Aso Villa, Abuja.
As the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Tinubu chose Prof. Ali Muhammad Pate, an experienced figure in the field of global health.
Prior to his appointment, he held a number of top posts in Nigeria and overseas and served on a number of health-related boards in the governmental, corporate, and not-for-profit sectors.
The following are some things to understand about Ali Pate:
In Bauchi State’s Misau local government, Pate was born on September 6, 1968. According to reports, he is the first member of his family to earn a diploma from a secondary school.
He graduated from Kaduna state’s Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria. He moved to Gambia after earning his medical degree from ABU, where he spent a few years working in small-town hospitals, according to Wikipedia.
The Nigerian politician and medical professional received an MBA from Duke University in the United States and training in internal medicine and infectious diseases. He had previously attended University College London. He also holds a master’s degree in health system management from the UK’s London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
In 2000, he became a Young Professional with the World Bank Group and worked on health concerns in a number of places, including Africa and the East Asia and Pacific.
Until 2011, when he was named the Minister of State for Health, he served as the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Primary Health Care Agency.
The number of cases of wild poliomyelitis reduced from 803 at the end of 2008 to just 11 in 2010, thanks to a policy that he established as the ED and CEO of the NPHCDA.
Pate had a key role in developing the transformation plan to handle open concerns. He also put up innovative ideas, such as partnering between the public and private sectors and teaching middle management in primary healthcare. In order to address the high maternal and infant morbidity and mortality rates in the nation, he also created the Midwives’ Service Scheme.
He received the Harvard Health Leader award from the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program in 2012 for his work improving healthcare in underdeveloped nations.
In order to become a professor at Duke University’s Global Health Institute in the United States of America, he resigned from his post as Minister of State for Health in 2013.
He acquired the title of Chigarin Misau on May 2, 2014, in honor of his accomplishments and public service for Nigeria. His founding of the Chigari Foundation coincides with the acknowledgment. Providing top-notch leadership in involving communities in Nigeria is the mission of the nonprofit Chigari Foundation.
He started serving as the chief executive officer of Big Win Philanthropy in 2015 for a three-year term. Big Win Philanthropy is an independent foundation that makes investments in children and young people in developing nations to help them improve their lives and maximize opportunities for long-term economic growth in their specific regions.
In 2015, Pate ran for governor of Bauchi state as a candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party. However, Pate came in third place in the party primary with 86 votes, falling behind Babayo Gamawa (116 votes) and Mohammed Jatau (368) who went on to win the election.
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However, Muhammed Abubakar of the All Progressives Congress defeated Jatau in the general election.
In his additional capacity as a Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, he also taught a course in 2016 titled “Leadership Development in Global Health: Building Community Trust Networks.”
Pate was named the Director of the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children, and Adolescents and the Global Director, Health, Nutrition, and Population Global Practice of the World Bank in May 2019. Both positions are situated in Washington, DC.
He oversaw the World Bank’s $18 billion COVID-19 global health response between 2019 and 2021, and he also represented the Bank on the boards of Gavi, the Global Fund, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.
He ran for office in March 2019 under the banner of the People’s Redemption Party, but Bala Muhammed, a PDP candidate and former minister of the FCT, defeated him.
He was named the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health’s Julio Frenk Professor of Public Health Leadership on July 1.
The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health will welcome Pate back as a Julio Frenk Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership in September 2021.
He ran in the APC’s primary for governor again in May 2022 but lost to Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, a former chief of the air staff.
Pate received the Commander of the Order of the Niger on October 11, 2022.
He gave up his position as Chief Executive Officer of the global vaccine alliance, Gavi, in July 2023 so that he may go back to Nigeria and help his own nation.
Gavi had announced in February that Pate, who will succeed American medical epidemiologist Seth Berkley, who had held the role since 2011, would start on August 3.
“He has taken a very difficult decision to accept a plea to return and contribute to his native country, Nigeria,” Pate informed Gavi.
In addition to the First WHO Health Systems Research Forum in 2009 in Montreux, Switzerland, Mckinsey’s Geneva Health Forum in 2009 in Switzerland, the Ernst Strungmann Forum in 2010 in Frankfurt, Germany, the China-Africa Roundtable for Health in 2010 and the Pacific Summit in 2011 in Seattle, Washington, the United States, he has also participated on numerous national and international panels.
He has been on the American International Health Alliance’s board of directors since 2017.
In addition, he serves on the boards of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Steering Committee on Assessment of Impact of Polio Eradication on Routine Immunization, Merck for Mothers, the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative, and the Board of the Private Health Sector Alliance of Nigeria.
- Pate is married and has two sons and four children.
