Boss Mustapha’s Confession On Nigeria’s Health Sector, PDP’s Caustic Response And The Choice To Do It Right
Let leadership kick start the building of the broken health sector, and other things would follow.
However, rather than castigate the SGF beyond that level, this probably might be the right time to urge him to work towards making things right.
Indeed it got so bad that one aspect of the coup speech by then Brigadier Sani Abacha that ushered in the military interregnum of 1983 that lasted till 1999 was to rant on Nigeria’s hospitals having degenerated into “mere consulting clinics”.
It was that bad, and bad still, that current Nigerian president constantly chose to go to the United Kingdom for his medicals.
Curiously, Nigerian medical experts litter Europe, the Arabian peninsula, the Americas and a few other African States. It says one thing: The country has human capacity in various medical fields. What is lacking is the infrastructure, and perhaps leadership.
That Nigeria led the fight in the Ebola outbreak push back showed what leadership and determination can do. Nigerian then earned praise from the global community.
This is yet another opportunity for the Buhari led administration to take the nation out of the health woods and put it on the pedestal that China reached, building brand new hospitals like confetti on a weekly basis to fight the Coronavirus pandemic. It is doable here too !
Here’s the PDP’s response to SGF Boss Mustapha’s confession:
PDP to Buhari: SGF’s comments on health sector, confirmation of failure
APRIL 10, 2020
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, yesterday said the confession by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Boss Mustapha, that the nation’s health sector had gone comatose has confirmed the failure of President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
This is as a party argues that Mustapha’s comments also served as a further vindication of its stand that the Buhari administration is the saddest chapter in the national history.
In a statement issued by spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP said “the confession of the SGF, who serves as the very engine room of the Buhari administration, further vindicates our position that President Buhari is running an incompetent administration that thrives only on propaganda and false performance claims, while the nation is left in pains, trauma and agony.
“He portrays this government as one that is not in touch with national reality but only administers the nation remotely from the comfort of Aso villa, while its cronies loot huge budgetary allocations and merely claimed to have released same for the health need of our citizens.
“If anything, the Buhari administration has only succeeded in reversing all the gains made in the health sector by successive PDP administrations whose robust National Strategic Health Development Plan brought in new technologies and effectively repositioned our health institutions for the good of our people.
“The Buhari administration has reversed the gains of past administration so much even the once celebrated State House Clinic in the Aso Presidential Villa has been largely reduced to a mere consulting centre while our National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, has become the Automated Teller Machine, ATM, of government cronies.
“The irreversible lesson which the Buhari administration must take from Boss’s confession is that no matter how falsehood, propaganda, beguiling and deceit appear to thrive, the truth will always show forth at the end.”
The SGF who chairs the Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 was recently quoted as saying earlier in the week that he never knew the nation’s health sector was so deplorable until his appointment to head the government’s response committee”.
However, going beyond criticism and lamentations, let workable suggestions be proffered to take the nation out of the woods. Nigerians were gratified to note that when the first case of Coronavirus was discovered in the country, the nation’s scientists went to work immediately and within one week, published the genome sequence of the virus that they quickly shared to labs world wide, aimed at understanding the virus and finding a cure. This is encouraging.
Pages: 1 2
