The myth surrounding Sokoto specialist hospital
By Àminu Mohammed
Once again, the Sokoto Specialist Hospital is in the news but this time not so lucky to escape the wrath of the state governor, His Excellency, Ahmed Aliyu who paid a midnight surprise visit inside Keke Marwa or Keke Napep or perhaps, Agwagwa da buje as popularly known in Sokoto and lamented on the state of affairs he observed. To start with, he met the public funded hospital in total darkness and throughout the one hour he spent inspecting the condition of the hospital, he used hand made touch light usually used by security men guarding private residences.
Just like in a movie, His Excellency moved from ward to ward and in all the wards he visited either the nurses on duty were outside battling with mosquitoes or fast asleep. Late Gen. Sani Abacha once said, “our hospitals have become mere consulting clinics”, yes, mere consulting clinics but in case of public hospitals, bureaucracy has always been the major stranglehold.
Governor Aliyu who was once a commissioner of health in the state decided to inspect how the hospital he once looked with pride is now fairing and trust Nigeria’s public infrastructure, always decaying day by day.
The governor’s midnight visit gave him first hand state of the hospital which officials of the immediate past administration used as a conduit pipe to siphon public money. For the eight years former governor Tambuwal ruled Sokoto, a lot of public fund was sunk in that hospital, yet, its services and performance have always been questionable.
Before Tambuwal came on board as chief executive of the state, the Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko administration which handed over to Tambuwal was giving a monthly allocation of five million naira to the hospital which enabled it discharged its responsibilities accordingly. However, when Tambuwal took over, instead of increasing the allocation, he reduced it from N5 million to one and a half million naira( N1.5m) and ironically, before he left, the hospital was on zero allocation. Therefore, the condition the governor met the hospital was not directly the making of the hospital authority but the administration before his was the Mastermind of most of the problems. Which hospital on earth can run an efficient service for 30 days with a million and half and for closed to nine months on zero allocation?
In fact, in 1999 when the Attahiru Bafarawa administration took over from the military, he jerked the monthly subvention of the hospital to a million and half and Wamakko increased it to two and half million and then to Five million. Why did the Tambuwal administration reduce the hospital’s monthly allocation to one and half million and later placed it on zero allocation for nine months as a cashless public parastatal? Simple, to siphon public funds. No wonder all the Sokoto state government accounts were in red.
The problem of the Sokoto Specialist Hospital began long before Gov. Ahmed Aliyu took over the affairs of the state on May 29, 2023. If my memory is still as sharp as my active journalism days, then the problem began since the early 90s when I was a reporter with the Path Newspaper, Sokoto. In 1992, we lost our chief driver in a road accident along Sokoto/ Gusau Road when he was returning from Gusau where he drove our editor home to see his family. His body was deposited at the mortuary at the specialist hospital in Sokoto. The accident occurred on a Friday night and by Saturday morning when we went to the hospital to claim his remains, the gory site at the mortuary made me sick. The smell that greeted us at the entrance was something nobody would wish his relation to be deposited there.
Again, one of our reporters then undertook a special investigation on the specialist hospital and our screamer that week was Sokoto Specialist Hospital Stinks and that story raised hell at the Seat of Power ( Lodge Road) the reporter was declared wanted but thank God we had a professional editor who was always there to own up.
Furthermore, I had a personal experience of negligence by one of the doctors in that same hospital in 2012 when my year old daughter inhaled smoke from a burning water heater and when we rushed her to the specialist hospital, there was no card attendant and the doctor on call was at large. We had to rush her to a private hospital where we doled out heavy naira notes with no thanks to the incompetence of public doctors.
The recent midnight visit to the specialist hospital Sokoto by the state governor who was a one time health commissioner is indeed commendable because it has afforded him the opportunity to see how rotten the hospital has become in the last decade and how urgent it requires a rescue mission. The on the spot assessment is to enable him take urgent steps to revive the entire health sector which is part of his 9 point agenda.
Gov. Ahmed Aliyu has already summoned the Chief Medical Director and his team to meet him to find a way forward. This has proved that the governor is humane and above all ready to move Sokoto to a higher level.
But then, we pray similar secret visits would cover the education sector which is another area requiring state of emergency. The governor should visit some selected primary and secondary schools in the state with a view to draw an action plan that may redeem that sector..
This APC administration has shown signs of commitment and the desire to develop Sokoto and we must all support Gov Ahmed Aliyu and his team to move the state forward. Now that the Sokoto Specialist Hospital is about to be rescued, we hope, education would be next because the future of the state lies in that sector.
Again, kudos to Gov Ahmed Aliyu for the efforts so far made in providing water to the inhabitants of Sokoto who have in the last six months become slaves to water vendors. Like Oliver Twist, more is what the people expect. The journey of one thousand kilometers begins with a step. Gov Ahmed Aliyu has already taken that step to take Sokoto to the next level.
Sokoto is working again, APC is back again and Gov. Ahmed Aliyu is on the march again!
