The Osun State Government has denied mismanaging a $20.5 million health grant received from the World Health Organisation.
The State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party has accused the state government of squandering the grant and challenged the state Governor, Gboyega Oyetola, to make public, details of the 256 Primary Healthcare Centres his administration claimed to have renovated with the money.
Debunking this claim on Friday, at an inter-ministerial press conference, organised by the state government in Osogbo, the state Commissioner for Health, Dr Rafiu Isamotu, said the WHO grant was channelled to revitalisation, renovation, rehabilitation and upgrading of the 332 Primary Health Care centres in all the wards in the state.
Isamotu noted that the state governor made health care of residents of the state his corner stone/priority, adding that all the state general hospitals were also renovated, upgraded and equipped, while new bed wards and doctors’ quarters were also built.
But the state government could not disclose how much had been expended out of the grant and what was remaining.
The government also kept mum on questions bearing on how much was expended on tackling the COVID-19 pandemic in the state.
Reeling out further achievements of the Oyetola-led administration, Isamotu disclosed that 600 free surgical operations, funded by the state government, were also conducted, in collaboration with a Non-Governmental Organisation.
He said as part of the state government’s fight against COVID-19, 350 bed space isolation centres were also built by the state government and that test kits, drugs and other medical items, worth N251.5 million, were procured and supplied to all the health centres and hospitals in the state.
Corroborating the commissioner of health, the state Commissioner for Works and Transport, Remi Omowaiye, explained that the WHO grant was gotten for the ‘Saving One Million Lives’ programme and further denied that the money was mismanaged.
Omowaiye explained that the money was not given directly to the state but deposited with the Central Bank of Nigeria and that the money was being released gradually, through a due process, and on the ground that it would be used on health matters.
He said in addition to revitalising the 332 health centres in the state, the sum of N100, 000 was given to each of the centres, monthly, as their running cost.
He explained that the clarification on how the WHO grant was used, or was being used, became necessary, based on calls by people in the opposition party on the state government to explain how the money was expended.
He said his ministry handled the construction and rehabilitation of several roads and construction of bed wards and other health facilities plus the rehabilitation of the state general hospitals, adding that most construction and rehabilitation projects had been completed.
Omowaiye explained that the governor was the chairman of the state health revitalisation committee, and that the governor was always supervising the activities of the state ministries to ensure that money released and gotten for health care was properly and judiciously used.
The state Commissioner for Information and Civic Orientation, Funke Egbemode, in her address, said the inter-ministerial press conference, which was the administration’s maiden edition, was organised to present the score cards of Gov. Oyetola and his cabinet.
Egbemode said the government would be holding the inter-ministerial press conference on a monthly basis to update journalists, and by extension the masses, on the activities of the state government.
