Meet Ali Pate, the man to heal Nigeria’s ailing health sector

Nine days after the Senate confirmed them following a week-long vetting process, President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday announced the portfolios of 45 ministers.

On Monday at the State House Conference at Aso Villa, Abuja, the President will swear in the ministers.

Prof. Ali Muhammad Pate, a seasoned figurehead in global health, was chosen by Tinubu as the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare.

He has held many top roles in Nigeria and overseas and served on a number of boards with a health focus in the governmental, corporate, and not-for-profit sectors.

What you should know about Ali Pate is listed below:

In the Misau local government area of Bauchi State, Pate was born on September 6, 1968. According to reports, he is the first person in his family to graduate from high school.

He attended Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Kaduna state. After earning his degree from ABU, he relocated to the Gambia, where he spent a few years working at small-town hospitals, according to Wikipedia.

The Nigerian doctor and politician received his MBA from Duke University in the United States and training in infectious diseases and internal medicine. He attended University College London prior to this. From the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom, he also holds a Master’s degree in Health System Management.

He began working with the World Bank Group in 2000 as a Young Professional and focused on health concerns in a number of areas, including Africa and East Asia and the Pacific.

He was named Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Primary Health Care Agency in 2008, serving in that capacity until 2011, when he was named Minister of State for Health.

He established a policy whereby leaders in relevant fields assisted in promoting immunization; as a result, cases of wild poliomyelitis reduced from 803 at the end of 2008 to just 11 in 2010.

Pate had a key role in developing the agenda for change to handle unresolved challenges. Additionally, he put out ground-breaking ideas like partnering between the public and private sectors and educating middle management about primary healthcare. He created the Midwives’ Service Scheme as well to alleviate the high maternal and infant mortality rate in the nation.

His support of healthcare in underdeveloped nations earned him the title of Harvard Health Leader in 2012 from the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Programme.

In 2013, he gave up his post as the Minister of State for Health to accept a professorship at Duke University’s Global Health Institute in the United States of America.

He was awarded the title of Chigarin Misau on May 2, 2014, in honor of his accomplishments and public service to Nigeria. The Chigari Foundation, which he formed, was also born as a result of the acknowledgment. A non-profit organization called Chigari Foundation seeks to engage Nigerian communities via world-class leadership.

He started serving as Big Win Philanthropy’s chief executive officer in 2015 for a three-year term. Big Win Philanthropy is a nonprofit organization that invests in children and young people in developing nations to help them improve their lives and take advantage of opportunities for long-term economic growth in their specific regions.

Pate ran for governor of Bauchi state in 2015 as a candidate for the Peoples Democratic Party, however he came in third place with 86 votes in the party primary, falling behind Babayo Gamawa (116 votes) and Mohammed Jatau (368) who ultimately won.

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In contrast, Muhammed Abubakar, the All Progressives Congress candidate, defeated Jatau in the general election.

In 2016, he also served as a Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he taught a course titled “Leadership Development in Global Health: Building Community Trust Networks.”

As of May 2019, Pate is based in Washington, DC, and serves as the Global Director of the World Bank’s Health, Nutrition, and Population Global Practice as well as the Director of the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children, and Adolescents.

He oversaw the World Bank’s $18 billion COVID-19 global health response between 2019 and 2021, and he represented the Bank on a number of boards, including those 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 People’s Redemption Party banner, but Bala Muhammad, a former minister of the FCT and PDP candidate, defeated him.

On July 1, 2019, he was named the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health’s Julio Frenk Professor of Public Health Leadership.

As the Julio Frenk Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Pate will be returning to Harvard University in September 2021.

He again ran in the APC’s governorship primary in May 2022, but this time he was defeated by Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, a former chief of the air staff.

Pate received the title of Commander of the Order of the Niger on October 11, 2022.

He stepped down as the Chief Executive Officer of Gavi, the international vaccine alliance, in July 2023 so that he may return to Nigeria and help his own nation.

Seth Berkley, a medical epidemiologist from the United States, had held the role since 2011, but Gavi had announced in February that Pate will take over on August 3.

Pate told Gavi, “It has been an exceedingly difficult decision for him to accept a request to return and help his own Nigeria.”

The First WHO Health Systems Research Forum in 2009 in Montreux, Switzerland; the Mckinsey Geneva Health Forum in 2009; 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, USA are just a few of the national and international panels on which he has participated.

He has served as a director on the American International Health Alliance’s board since 2017.

He serves on the boards of several organizations, including 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 has two boys and four daughters from his marriage.