The Aso Villa clinic, officially known as State House Medical
Centre, received only N1,195,257,022.13 out of the budgeted N3,365,000,000
since 2015.
Jalal Arabi, permanent secretary of the state
house, said this in a statement issued on Sunday.
Arabi said this could be verified from the
ministries of finance and budget and national planning.
“The attention of the presidency has been
drawn to recent media reports suggesting that the State House Medical Centre
had received N11.01billion as appropriation for the period 2015-2017,” read the
statement signed by Attah Esa, deputy director of information, at the state
house.
“According to the permanent secretary, State
House, Jalal A. Arabi, contrary to the above claims, out of the total capital
appropriation of N2.9 billion and recurrent appropriation of N465 million for
the period under reference, only the sum of N969 million (representing 32.97%)
for capital and N225 million (representing 48.41%) for recurrent was actually
released.
“It may interest the public to know that there
was zero capital allocation for the medical centre in 2017, while out of the
N331 million being the recurrent appropriation for 2017, the actual amount
released up to September was N91 million (representing only 27.54%).
The statement said despite the shortfalls
between budgetary provisions and actual releases, the medical centre provided
free services to the “over 10,000 registered patients” annually.
“In addition, the centre has continued to
execute on-going projects,” the statement read.
“Apart from the presidency, other
beneficiaries of the free services include political appointees, the military,
para-military, other security agencies, members of the national assembly, and
the general public,” it read.
“Considering the unrestricted patronage base
and free services of the State House Medical Centre, coupled with the funding
hiccups and periodic receipts, it may not be far-fetched to notice gaps between
demand and supply of medical equipment and consumables at certain stages of the
budget circle.”
The medical centre has been in the news since
Zahra, one of the daughters of President Muhammadu Buhari, took to social media
to complain about the state of thefacility.
One week after her public criticism, the
president’s wife called for a probe of the allocations to
the clinic.
In August, TheCable did a report on
the embarrassing situation at the hospital.
The house of representatives has set up a
committee to probe the clinic.
Source: thecable.ng
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