Aso Rock Clinic: Reps condemn poor oversight, demand details from Health, Abuja ministers

The House of Representatives on Thursday demanded detailed information on Aso Rock Clinic from the Minister of Health and his Federal Capital Territory, FCT, counterpart.

Magaji Aliyu, the Chairman, House ad hoc committee on the clinic, disclosed this at its sitting in Abuja. Mr. Aliyu said the objective of the committee was to get to the root cause of the problem at the clinic.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Osagie Ehanire, the Minister of State for Health and FCT Health Secretary, Amanda Pam, had presented conflicting reports on the clinic, as such the committee required further clarification.

“The summary of the whole thing is that the clinic is just there, it is not supervised and is not under anybody. “The Ministry of Health and FCT said they are not aware, meaning the hospital is just there.

I want all information on the clinic. We can’t afford to risk the life of Mr President and somebody should be responsible,” he said. The House had on October 12 queried the allocation of more than N11 billion to the clinic without commensurate results.

NAN recalls that Aisha Buhari, the wife of Nigeria’s President, had called for a probe of the Aso Clinic over poor health facilities in the hospital in spite of the huge budgetary allocation to it. Mrs. Buhari, who condemned the “lack of facilities” at the hospital during a programme in Abuja, equally lamented the dearth of some facilities such as syringe, drugs and equipment needed for saving lives.

She lamented that she wanted to do an x- ray at the clinic few weeks ago, but was told the X-ray machine was not functional. The call by the wife of the President for a probe on the hospital is in line with her husband, Muhammadu Buhari’s drive to free every sector of the Nigerian polity of corruption.