…..No facility in State House Clinic after gulping N12b in 3years.
In October 2017, wife of the President, Hajia Aisha Buhari, publicly cried out on the state of the State House Clinic, lamenting about the poor health facilities in the hospital despite the huge budgetary allocation to it.
Regretting the
total or dearth of some necessary hospital facilities such as syringe, drugs
and equipment needed for saving lives, the First Lady noted that she wanted to
do an x-ray at the clinic at the Clinic but was told the X-ray machine was not
functional.
The clinic established to take care of the President, the Vice President and their families as well as other key staff of the seat power was designed to be a first rate clinic.
The Clinic had become such an embarrassment that the loquacious First Lady could not stomach it and had to attack the Chief Medical Director, Dr. Husain Munir at a public function in Abuja.
She was also hard on those managing the seat of power under the direct supervision of the Chief of Staff, Malam Abba Kyari.
Global Upfront News (GUN) learnt that the First Lady was provoked into acting publicly because the Clinic could not carry out its simplest primary role of treating routine cases.
The House of Representatives had responded to the First Lady’s outburst by passing a resolution to probe how the N10.9 bn allegedly released to the clinic between 2015 and 2017 was spent.
An ad hoc Committee of the House headed by Hon. Aliyu Magaji, immediately commenced a hearing on the Clinic with the Permanent Secretary, State House, Alhaji Jalal Arabi, telling the Committee that the clinic was indeed in a deplorable state.
Asked pointedly by Magaji: “We take it that the President’s wife is right?” The Permanent Secretary said: “I can’t say that the First Lady is wrong.”
Since then not much was heard of the clinic except the yearly large allocation of funds in the federal budget until this week when The Presidency’s Number Three staff, after the President and Vice President, Abba Kyari was infected with the dreaded Coronavirus (COVID-19) plaguing the globe which Nigeria not exempted.
Global Upfront News, learnt that since Chief of Staff cannot be airlifted to Lagos because of the poor condition of the isolation centres there or flown to London Hospital where he has been having his medical evaluations for years (because of the closure of land and air borders), Malam Kyari had to turn to the State House Clinic.
But GUN gathered that they met a shocking discovery that the Clinic was not equipped to attend to any serious situation as there was no working ventilator available in the clinic.
The GUN learnt that emergency situation forced the operatives to demobilize some equipment from other hospitals in town to the Clinic to attend to the VIPs being treated at the Clinic.
A reliable source who would not want to be named for obvious reasons told GUN Correspondent that everyone is feeling embarrassed, yet happy that those whose actions and inactions contributed to the poor state of things at the Clinic are reaping the rewards. Said a source: “It’s good that perpetrators of corruption, perpetrators of neglect of the Clinic over the years, are now its victims.”
Meanwhile the devastating state of things at the Presidential Villa, Abuja has forced a scale down in operations as well as visitors. Even some perceived unfriendly media have been blocked access from covering events in the Villa.
The Presidential Spokesman Femi Adesina told journalists that The Presidency is observing partial closure in line with the social distancing advisory from COVID-19.