Scarcity of Funds: Again, Aso Rock Clinic Tightens Public Access

—-Only Buhari, Osinbajo’s Families, Villa Staff To Use Facility

Scarcity of funds is forcing the State House to further tighten public access to the Aso Rock Clinic, the Permanent Secretary, Tijjani Umar, said on Thursday.

He disclosed that the current number of 32,000 patients serviced by the facility was no longer “sustainable” because of dwindling budgetary allocations.

Umar, who spoke at a workshop on how to strengthen service delivery at the facility, merely echoed what his predecessor, Jalal Arabi, had also said at some point in the past.

Findings by THE WHISTLER indicated that, originally designed to cater for the medical needs of the President, the Vice-President, their families and members of staff of the Presidential Villa, the clinic had undergone transition over time.

It was given additional responsibilities at some point with a name change to State House Medical Centre. It implied opening access to the public.

However, amid paucity of funds, the State House, since 2019, began a gradual return of the clinic to the original function of servicing the health needs of the first and second families as well as Villa workers.

The clinic has received a yearly budgetary allocation averaging N1billion in the last three years, an amount Umar said was too meagre to deliver services to all the people who sought medical care there.

He explained that over the years, the clinic had had to bend backwards to provide services to those he called “hangers-on”, a weight Umar insisted could no longer be carried.

The permanent secretary spoke further, “We are going to trim down the number of unentitled people. If you have five children in your house (and) neighbours send like 20 every evening to come (and eat), your pot will not be enough. That’s what we are saying…

“This will assist us to look at those areas requiring improvement…the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.

“First and foremost, we are talking about service provision. Service provision cuts across all facets of services. Services by human beings, meaning doctors, other medical staff, services through the provision of equipment and facilities.

“We are going to do everything we can to ensure that we stay up fine and in top shape serving our patients. So, it is like an across the board kind of improvement that I am talking about.

“It simply means that the lean resources of today might not allow us to achieve our aim. Therefore, we need partnerships, we need relationships.”

He recalled how the clinic used to be the facility for assessing healthcare delivery, but lamented that things had deteriorated in recent times.

Umar added, “The clinic used to be a yardstick for performance measurement in the medical enclave and pride of the highly trained and experienced personnel working there.

“However, over the recent years, it was observed that services rendered at the clinic to the privileged few, suffered noticeable decline to almost zero service delivery. This resulted to a mockery of the facility and loss of confidence by its customers on its ability to render effective service.

“In an effort to upturn this ugly trend and revive its past glory, the State House Management reversed the medical centre profile granted the facility, to its original status of clinic, in order to limit the number of patients it handles and also maintain the original purpose it was created for.

“As you are all aware, in order to further improve service delivery in the clinic, an outpatient survey was conducted in October 2019, by the SERVICOM National Office and the State House SERVICOM unit.

“A report on that regard had since been forwarded to me and in order to review the findings of the survey, as well as propose an action plan indicating short, medium and long term actions to improve service delivery at the clinic, I approved that this session be convened, involving all relevant stakeholders, and cut across all departments of the clinic, with active involvement of the SERVICOM Unit, to promote service improvement in the Clinic.”

Speaking earlier, the Servicom National Coordinator, Mrs Nnenna Akajemeli, mentioned shortage of doctors and lack of regular electricity supply as the major setbacks to the facility.

It was wife to the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari, who in October, 2017, first raised the alarm over the state of decay at the clinic.

She narrated how she took ill and opted to use the services of the clinic only to discover that it could not boast of a syringe.

Mrs Buhari had narrated, “If somebody like Mr. President can spend several months outside Nigeria, then you wonder what will happen to a man in the street.

“Few weeks ago, I was sick as well. They advised me to take the first flight out to London; I refused to go. I said I must be treated in Nigeria because there is a budget for an assigned clinic to take care of us. If the budget is N100m, we need to know how the budget is spent.

 “Along the line, I insisted they call Aso Clinic to find out if the X-ray machine is working. They said it was not working. They didn’t know I was the one that was supposed to be in that hospital at that very time.

“I had to go to a hospital that was established by foreigners 100 per cent. What does that mean?

“So, I think it is high time we did the right thing. If something like this can happen to me, there is no need for me to ask the governors’ wives what is happening in their states. This is Abuja and this is the highest seat of government, and this is the Presidential Villa.

“One of the speakers has already said we have very good policies in Nigeria; in fact, we have the best policies in Africa. Yes, of course, we have, but the implementation has been the problem. So, we need to change our mindset and do the right thing.”