National Assembly backs probe into Aso rock clinic

Nigerian lawmakers are to look into the financing of the country’s presidential health facility, after criticism it lacks drugs and equipment despite massive government funding.

The main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said there was a need to probe “the deplorable condition of the State House Clinic” and alleged deductions from payments to staff.

The clinic has been allocated just over 11 billion naira ($30 million, 26 million euros) in the last three years for upgrading and the purchase of drugs and equipment. Earlier this week President Muhammadu Buhari’s wife Aisha said doctors at the clinic in Abuja recently advised her to seek medical treatment abroad but she refused.

She said there was “no single syringe” and “no equipment” at the clinic during a speech that criticised the overall state of healthcare provision as “very, very, very poor”.

One of the president’s daughters, Zahra, recently called for an investigation of the medical centre, claiming it lacked basic drugs such as paracetamol. She said on her Instagram account that staff had no equipment to work with and asked: “Where is the money going to?”

UCJ, UNILORIN.