The permanent secretary said the completion of the hospital on record time by the construction firm was commendable and comes off as one of President Buhari’s legacy projects for the country.
Officials from the presidency on Friday embarked on a “pre-handing over inspection” of the multi-billion-naira VIP wing of the State House Clinic being constructed by Julius Berger Company within the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Permanent Secretary, State House, Tijjani Umar, led President Muhammadu Buhari’s Personal Physician, Suhaib Rafindadi and Senior Special Assistant on Domestic Sarki Abba, to inspect the 13-bed edifice.
The officials expressed satisfaction with the pace of work and the quality of equipment already fitted in the 5-star facility ahead of the official handover.
The permanent secretary said the completion of the hospital on record time by the construction firm was commendable and comes off as one of President Buhari’s legacy projects for the country.
Dr Rafindadi said the medical facility designed to provide emergency services to VIPs in need was better late than never.
SaharaReporters had also reported recently that the Nigerian government had proposed to spend the sum of N393,661,239 on the ongoing construction of the presidential wing of the State House Medical Centre at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja in 2023.
This was contained in the budget proposal of N20.51 trillion budget President Buhari presented to the joint session of the National Assembly for the 2023 fiscal year.
However, despite the huge amounts of the money budgeted and claimed to have been expended on the State House clinic, President Buhari does not make use of the medical centre.
He has frequently been on medical trips to London in the UK since his assumption of office in 2015.
Over the years, billions of naira have been allocated for the construction and equipping of the presidential clinic in the State House, yet, in 2017, the Nigeria’s First Lady, Aisha Muhammadu Buhari berated the management of the State House Clinic as she lamented that on her visit to the hospital, there was no single syringe.
Similarly, President Buhari’s daughter, Zahra reportedly made the same observation on her Instagram handle, when she called out the Permanent Secretary of the State House Clinic, Jalal Arabi, for not being able to provide ‘ordinary paracetamol’ in the clinic even though N331.7 million was allocated to the State House Clinic in that year’s budget.
In 2020 and 2021, the sum of N416.6 million and N1.06 billion were budgeted respectively for the construction of the Presidential (VIP) Wing of the State House Clinic, and as at March this year, the Permanent Secretary, State House, Tijanni Umar, confirmed the money had already been paid in full.
The Permanent Secretary, Umar also disclosed that out of the N20.8 billion allocated for the same project in the 2022 budget, the federal government had paid N8.5 billion.
It therefore means that between 2020 and 2022, at least the sum of N10 billion has been spent on the construction of the Presidential Wing of the State House Clinic which is still neither being used by the President nor his family members.