Senate on Thursday called for the upgrade of the State House Clinict with full equipment to enable it stabilise the President’s health during any serious sickness before being flown abroad for proper medical treatment if needs be.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Federal Character and Intergovernmental Affairs, Senator Danjuma La’ah (PDP Kaduna South), who made the call during the 2021 budget defence of the State House by its Permanent Secretary, Tijani Umar, said this would reduce the foreign medical trips by the President and other top officials of his government.
The sum of N19.7billion was proposed for the State House in the 2021 budget, out of which N1.3billion was proposed for the Clinic alone.
La’ah said: “Our president is not a man to be taken out anytime or anything that happens to him on sickness matter.
“He must attend our clinic here and we must make sure that we equip our hospital to the best of our ability so that any emergency will be first taken care of here before flying out if the need arises.”
According to him, the N1.3billion for the clinic would be approved by the National Assembly to enable the Presidency carry out the upgrade of the clinic within the shortest time, adding that “oversight will be done monthly, if all that is needed is provided and we will give two years to complete it.”
The Permanent Secretary, had earlier complained that the N1.3 billion for the clinic “is absolutely inadequate when you juxtapose the amount proposed and the labour – the status of the principals that that project is going to serve and you compare with worldwide standards you see that it is not anything near what we need.”
According to Umar, “It (the clinic) is considered a legacy project for us because we want to leave something down.”
The Permanent Secretary in an interview with journalists after defending his budget promised to put necessary arrangements in place to meet to medical needs of the President and other top officials once the budget was approved.
