The London Evening Standard has released a list of the London National Health Service (NHS) Trust top earning Chief Executives. In a list that includes a top Nigerian Chief Executive, more than 60 of them are reported to be earning more than the Prime Minister David Cameron.

Many of the pay packets of the top executives dubbed “fat cats” exclude huge expenses and allowances bills including accommodation costs which alone can top £50,000 and in some cases, over £90,000 many times more that what average NHS workers earn. Ironically, many of these trusts are those embroiled in rows over downgrading of their Accidents & Emergency (A & E) services, the axing of hundreds of hospital beds as well as staff cuts

Trusts with bosses who earn these huge pay packets include the University College London, Guy’s & St Thomas’s, Royal Free, Kings College, and Chelsea and Westminster Hospitals. In all these cases, annual salaries for the chief executives exceed the £342.500 earned by the PM

Nigerian born Professor Stanley Okolo who is the Medical Director & Consultant Gynecologist at North Middlesex University Hospital London also makes top 20 in the list with an annual pay packet of £202,000.

Professor Okolo is one of the 100 Outstanding Nigerians in the UK awarded at the Nigerian Centenary Awards UK in 2014.

He was the Acting Chairman, Board of Management for the University of Calabar teaching Hospital from 2014 to April 2015. Prior to that, he was Honorary Professor University College Hospital, London and Honorary Visiting Professor at City University, London before that. Prof Stanley has also been Prof Ob-Gyn at the St George’s University Grenada from 2005..

The University of Nigeria, Nsukka MBBCh Graduate, lives in London with his family.

There are over 50 Nigerian Consultants and Chief Consultants working in the UK’s NHS.

Jummy Ariyo

August 2015